DMG Tool version 2.5.1

What is it?

DMG Tool was created to simplify the process of creating compressed disk images in Mac OS X. It's specifically designed for speed. The minimum you need to do is enter text into one field and click two buttons.

What do you need?

To use DMG Tool you need Mac OS X 10.1.2 or the December 2001 Developer Tools installed.

How to use it.

1) Double-click the DMG Tool icon.
2) Enter a file name.
3) Enter a volume size.
4) Enter a volume name.
5) Click "Create".
6) Copy files to the mounted image.
7a) Click "Finish" to quickly compressed and finalized the image to the Desktop.
7b) Click "Save" to choose the save location for the finalized image.

How it works.

DMG Tool is an AppleScript Studio GUI front end for the command line tool hdiutil. The commands used are hdiutil create, hdiutil convert, hdid, mv and rm. Since it makes use of the command line tools exclusively there are a few gotchas as noted below.

Gotchas!

Since the mv command is destructive making two images with the same filename back-to-back will destroy the first file created by over writing it. This shouldn't happen too often, shouldn't happen at all really, but I'm noting it here. Won't work when creating an image of a disk.

What's New

2.5.2 Fixed drag and drop bug that wouldn't respect quit setting when mounting disk images.

2.5.1 has support for creating a disk image from disk, this needs to use the ditto option for copying files, dittos is used by default and can be enabled in the preferences. Supports dragging of image files to the icon to mount them. Random code compacting. Down to 7 scripts from the 8 in 2.5 which was down from 14 in 2.4.1.

2.5 Re-did the user interface to take advantage of sheets to display the various progress bars. Moved the progress bars to inderterminate status since it makes more sense. Added "Image:From Folder" menu item to create a disk image from a folder. Added a preference item to allow you to select a save location for images. Added a preference item to save images created from drag and drop operations to the user selected folder instead of the source folder. Added in porgram help available from the "Help" menu.

2.4.2 Drag and drop now supports disk image encryption. Redid drag and drop size calculation, doens't use the Finder anymore so should be faster and result in less wasted space.

2.4.1 Convert image respects your gzip setting. More detailed help file included with this release. Fixed a bug when size starts with 1, 2 or 3.

2.4 Fixed bug in the "Image:Convert Image" code and added support for converting to NDIF images from "Image:Convert to NDIF" Introduce "Image:Get Info..." which shows information pertaining to the selected disk image.

2.3 supports dropping multiple folders onto the application to create multiple images. Return of the about box!

2.2 has User Preferences! Whatever options you choose in the standard DMG Tool disk image creation or via the new Preference menu item, are saved and reused in the future. It also modifies the defaults for Drag and Drop operations. Introduced Encrypted disk images. This only works from the main window in DMG Tool. Encrypted images can not be compressed, they'll lose their encryption. So the only compression option that takes affect when using encryption is gzip.

2.1 added support for using ZLIB compression of disk images. This compresses the end image as much as using GZip compression, this is the format used in drag and drop image creation and the new Convert Image option. ZLIB format is fully compatible with Mac OS X versions 10.1 or higher. The Convert Image menu command converts an image to UDZO format.

Fixed a few "what the hell happened there" bugs.

2.0 adds support for drag and drop disk image creation. Drop a folder to the icon and answer a few questions and everything gets taken care of.

1.5.1 adds support for selecting a source folder to copy to the mounted image, either by the Finder or by by the CL tool ditto. Also included are two AppleScripts. One is a droplet that mounts images dropped onto it, the other is a Menu Extra script that mounts the selected file.

Future Plans

Unknown.

Contact

Find any bugs or want to make a feature request email me at them@mac.com