How To Create a Mac OS X Mountain Lion System Image File Part 2

Author: Serge Siou
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http://www.macstudioa.com - How to Create a Mac OS X Mountain Lion System Image File on Apple's Mac Intel Based Systems. SUBSCRIBE For More Videos Like This:http://goo.gl/88PNgx Mac Mini iMac Mac Pro Xserve MacBook Air MacBook Pro (Works for: OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2, 10.8.3, 10.8.4,10.8.5, OS X Mavericks 10.9 and OS X Yosemite) External Hard Drive used: LaCie Rugged 1TB RAW SCRIPT: http://www.macstudioa.com/2013/02/how-to-create-mountain-lion-1082-system.html If you've been following our Blueprint Series, Glad to see you back for Part 2, Creating A Mac OS X System Image File. Some basic facts about a Mac OS X System Image File: 1. A Mac OS X System Image File is a backup and recovery file of your Mac OS X Operating System, in our case Mountain Lion, plus any Mac App Store updates that usually has to be performed from a clean install and any Third-Party Applications that you install on your Mac, included on it. 2. An image file only takes minutes to restore a Mac System back to the way you originally customized and configure it, compared to taking hours from a clean install, where you have to perform all updates and application installations all over again. 3. A Mac OS X boot disk is required to restore an image files. 4. And finally, you need two individual hard drives in order to create a System Image File, one being the Macintosh Hard Drive and the other, an Internal or External Hard Drive. What you will need: Some required devices required when deciding to create a System Image Backup under the Mac OS X environment. 1. A Mac (Intel based-Mac) 2. A Separate Internal and External Hard drive. (In our case, We'll be using a USB 3.0 External hard drive) if any of your Mac system has two individual Hard drives, (not two different partitions but two individual hard drives) then an external hard drive is not required, but good to have for portability) Basically for a System Image Backup to work and do it's job effectively, you need to create it on a completely separate hard drive from the main Macintosh hard drive. The External hard drive can have separate partitions, as long as it has enough space to create a System image file. Consider reserving at least 100GB to start with on your Internal or External Hard drive. So in our case, we will be assuming that you will be using an external hard drive, As always, don't forget to back-up your hard drive or drive when ever using the Mac Disk Utility Application. To check what applications is currently on your Macintosh Hard drive, click on LaunchPad... Everything shown in the yellow box and any additional third-party applications that you install on your Mac system will be included on the Mac System Image that you create. As you can see some of the third party applications will be included on the Mac OS X System Image File, plus Applications from the Mac App Store, like GarageBand, iMovie and iPhoto. TOP TIP: Before creating an Image File, make sure to check if there is any updates currently available from the Mac App Store. At this point, We'll insert our External USB External Hard drive, This is where the Mac OS X System Image will be copied too. Once loaded, We need to launch the Disk Utility application, click LaunchPad and go to the Other Folder, click Disk Utility to launch it, Now, on the Disk Utility Taskbar, Click File then scroll to New, Now scroll and click on "Disk image from Folder..." You will now be presented to Select the Folder to image which is basically the Macintosh HD. As I have many Hard drives and Partitions, I usually go to where all my Devices are as shown, which in my case is named "iSerge's Macbook Air" Now click on the Macintosh HD icon, then click the image button, We now need to give our image a name, I usually name them with the Date the image was created then choose where to copy the System Image too, in our case, it's our External USB Mac partitioned HD then click the down-arrow to expand the Mac External HD at this point, for easy cataloguing, we can create a folder where the image will be copied to, this is purely optional, I just do it for better cataloguing. In our case, I'll create one called "LatestMacImage" Once done...click on the Folder just created to make sure it's selected and click on the Save button, You will now be promoted to enter your Admin Details, do so and click the OK button, for the Image to start being created. We now need to "Scan Image for Restore", If you forget to do this, you will be prompted to do so when doing an actual System Image Restore. On the left-hand panel of the Disk Utility Window, click on the System Image File just created ("MacOSXImageDec222012.dmg"), Then go to the Disk Utility Taskbar and click on the "Images" tab, then scroll and click on "Scan Image for Restore..." And that's it, your Mac OS X System Image is now ready for Restore. If you have any question about Part 2 please comment below. Peace.

Comments

  1. thanks for this. just a question if i have system image for macbook air 11 inch can i restore this to macbook pro or iMac or macbook air 13 inch?
  2. how to resolve "the input/output error" I keep on getting this message everytime i try to create an image. Cheers
  3. Just as I was about to thank you, they gave me error "Unable to create Macintosh HD". (Input/Output Error)
  4. Thanks!! You saved my life!!!!
  5. hi, this copy the user files on the image too?
  6. This is great information Serge. I was having an incredibly difficult time accomplishing this. One thing as a note, When I launched the image creation, it would always hang and never complete. I resolved this by trashing the library\preferences\com.apple.diskimages.fcsk and then relaunching the 'disk image from folder' and everything else went without a hitch! Again, many thanks for putting this together!