Disk Utility Restore function

[csanborn]

Hello-

I am using 10.8.2 on a macbook air. I created a disk image that is 6.5 gigs big (when you do a get info in it it says the size is 6.5G), imaged from a HD that was 19.5 GB. When you do a get info on the image it says its only using 6.5 gigs of the 19 available. When I try to resore the image using Disk Utility to a thumb drive that is 16gigs big I get an error that says there is not enough space on the thumb drive. The thumb drive is empty, formatted with Mac OS Journaled, and is 16gb. I think whats happening is the restore process is seeing the full 19.5 gigs from the original drive I imaged, and not just the 6.5 gigs of data. Why is that? I thought that the image should only have gotten the data, not the tons of free space? I tried using the resize Image option, but it only lets me resize to 18gigs, not small enough to fit on my 16gb drive. How do I delete all the free space in my image?

Thanks

Chris

 

[Kaveman]

It's not 16gigs of data because it's compressed.

No you can't delete free space from a image, it doesn't have any.

Perhaps you should do some reading up on disk images, what they are for and how they work.

 

[csanborn]

Hi Kaveman-

So basically I want to make a cloan from one drive to the other. I could have sworn I have done this before without a problem...I want to clone Drive A, which is 20 gigs, but only has 6 gigs of data on it, to Drive B which is a blank 16GB thumb drive. When I do the retore in Disk Utility shouldnt it only be copying over the data, not the free space? All I did to create the image was select Drive A, press the Make Image button, chose compressed for the option, and clicked on OK.

As I said before, I also tried saving the image as the read/write option, and reducing the size afterwards, but it wouldnt let me reduce it to less then 18 gigs, which is only 2 gigs less is was originally (drive A)

Any idea's?

 

[Kaveman]

To clone a drive you need something like Carbon Copy Cloner.

Disk Utility will make an image, but you'll need a drive big enough to hold the unpacked results.