{"id":83,"date":"2009-12-06T13:21:19","date_gmt":"2009-12-06T11:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/?p=83"},"modified":"2015-06-19T09:17:17","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T07:17:17","slug":"snow-leopards-disk-utility-goofs-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/2009\/12\/06\/snow-leopards-disk-utility-goofs-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow Leopard&#8217;s &#8220;Disk Utility&#8221; can&#8217;t create encrypted image"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two months or so I ordered the Snow Leopard DVD for my Macbook Pro. Finally I had the time to perform the upgrade from Leopard. Before actually doing so, I tried to create a disk image of my current Leopard installation. So I booted the Snow Leopard DVD and ran &#8220;Disk Utility&#8221; from it. Because the target of that disk image was an external hard drive shared by my team, I wanted to create an encrypted image.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of whether I selected &#8220;128-Bit AES&#8221; or &#8220;256-Bit AES&#8221; as an encryption method, I immediately received the following error message on screen:<\/p>\n<pre>Unable to create \"Macintosh HD.dmg\" (Cannot allocate memory)<\/pre>\n<p>What is this trying to tell me? No space on hard drive? Impossible, since the external hard drive is a 2 TB <em>empty<\/em> drive. Moreover, &#8220;memory&#8221; usually refers to &#8220;main memory&#8221;, or &#8220;RAM.&#8221; So is Disk Utility actually trying to read the whole 200 GB hard drive into the RAM, then encrypting it, and then creating the disk image from it?! I can&#8217;t believe that anyone would be <em>that <\/em>stupid to design a disk imaging program like this&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I finally changed the image format to &#8220;Compressed&#8221;, and presto, it worked!<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, why, oh why is it so hard to generate &#8220;user friendly&#8221; error messages? And why does this happen under Mac OS X of all operating systems, supposedly being the &#8220;user friendliest&#8221; OS in the universe?<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first time I receive such useless error messages in OS X. Hey Apple, care to finally make your homework???<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two months or so I ordered the Snow Leopard DVD for my Macbook Pro. Finally I had the time to perform the upgrade from Leopard. Before actually doing so, I tried to create a disk image of my current Leopard installation. So I booted the Snow Leopard DVD and ran &#8220;Disk Utility&#8221; from it. Because [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,27,11],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-mac-computers","category-what-the-f","tag-encryption"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Snow Leopard&#039;s &quot;Disk Utility&quot; can&#039;t create encrypted image - Ralf&#039;s Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/2009\/12\/06\/snow-leopards-disk-utility-goofs-up\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Snow Leopard&#039;s &quot;Disk Utility&quot; can&#039;t create encrypted image - Ralf&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two months or so I ordered the Snow Leopard DVD for my Macbook Pro. 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Because [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/2009\/12\/06\/snow-leopards-disk-utility-goofs-up\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ralf&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-12-06T11:21:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-06-19T07:17:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ralf Bergs\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ralfbergs\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ralfbergs\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ralf Bergs\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/bergs.biz\\\/blog\\\/2009\\\/12\\\/06\\\/snow-leopards-disk-utility-goofs-up\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/bergs.biz\\\/blog\\\/2009\\\/12\\\/06\\\/snow-leopards-disk-utility-goofs-up\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Ralf Bergs\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/bergs.biz\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/354e37390b493c875f972bd313d29201\"},\"headline\":\"Snow Leopard&#8217;s &#8220;Disk Utility&#8221; 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