Restore Failure: Not enough space on /dev/disk2s2 to restore

[monaronyc]

What's up group!

Wanted to ask if any of you have had the privilege yet of experiencing this problem when imaging Macs in El Capitan with the new version of Disk Utility.

It appears that when you create an image from folder in DU under the File menu to create a .DMG of your boot disk with all apps and settings configured, it some how retains the size of the original disk. Even though the size of the .DMG under the Size column in the Finder window indicates the actual size.

For example, the disk being imaged is a 2 TB drive, but it's contents (Applications, Library, System, Users) combined is only 57 GB. Attached are screenshot for reference.

When we imaged a new iMac 5k with a 2 TB disk to .DMG and then tried to reimage another iMac with a smaller disk with that same .DMG we received the above error. We've been using this process for decades!!! On all different size drives. What the heck happened?!? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

And if we need to change the way we image our machines going forward with El Capitan, PLEASE, give us your suggestions!!!

[bpavlov]

I'm not surprised. Disk Utility in 10.11 is a steaming pile of shite.

I don't understand how they could break something that worked so well for so long. Just the other day I was trying to deal with formatting an SD card. It was microSD so I had to use SD card adapter. No problem reading and re-formatting/resizing in 10.10. But in 10.11 it would not let me reformat or resize. Even if I used diskutil.

The scenario I was dealing with was that I wanted to create a DMG of a small microSD card and simply migrate it to a bigger microSD. When I restored the DMG to the bigger microSD, I ended up with 2GBs on the microSD of storage and the rest (32GB) was not useable. So ultimately, I had to go back to a computer with 10.10 and all was well. I don't get why Disk Utility in 10.11 behaves this way.

Just to add, I also don't know whose bright idea it was to change the partitioning screen into a circle. It's almost impossible now to resize since the mouse has to move in a circular manner. It has also made completely formatting even more obscure. I've found myself selecting 1 Partition and it often does nothing but 'resize' the drive which is not what I want.

Then there's an issue if you try to use Disk Utility in Netboot in diskless mode and try to create a full dmg of the HD. It cannot create the DMG. I'm not sure why, but it just can't.

And these are just some of the things I've run into. Honestly, if they would have just removed the "repair permissions" in the old Disk Utility, they could have shipped it the way it was before and called it a day. I know I'm oversimplifying things, but it truly is a piece of shite.

To at least offer you some advice, I would recommend perhaps looking into utilizing hdiutil to create your DMGs and asr to restore. And hope that it works like you are used to....

EDIT: Sorry I meant asr to restore instead of diskutil.

[monaronyc]

@bpavlov Thanks for this, and totally concur! We don't have much experience in using Terminal to create disk images but we're definitely willing to try it! Anything to get over this hurdle.

[Chris_Hafner]

Since you're grabbing the whole OS, why not try Composer? Not that there's anything wrong with the command line.

[Chris_Hafner]

P.S. I also agree with the sentiments regarding Disk Utility. The new utility is a total joke. I'm all for Apple hiding various things on standard users, but crippling what was a great utility in for the sake of "User friendliness" is a total waste.