MacOS – How to Make Bootable APFS Volume From Disk Image

apfsbootdmgmacos

I am currently using terminal to early and quickly add APFS volumes to my Mac's APFS container.

Once I make an empty APFS volume in the container, how can I copy a disk image to it and make it bootable? I have tried using dd, but there have been various issues that seem to keep this from working. Thanks!

Best Answer

I would try rsync. Below is an example of the syntax. Here, I assume the source is the mounted disk image volume and the destination is the apfs volume.

rsync  -a  /Volumes/source/*  /Volumes/destination

Related Solutions

Convert a plain disk “legacy image” so that it can be mounted

This worked on High Sierra. This is from an ancient DC42 image format from a 512Ke system disk.

Todds-MBP-7:$ hdiutil convert Utilities1.image -format UDRO -o Converted
Preparing imaging engine…
Reading whole disk (Apple_HFS : 0)
.........................................................
(CRC32 $7335686D: whole disk (Apple_HFS : 0))
Adding resources
Elapsed Time:   2.822ms
File size: 729282 bytes, Checksum: CRC32 $E4490B5F
Sectors processed: 1600, 1417 copied
Speed: 245.2Mbytes/sec
Savings: 11.0%
created: /Users/WFN32919/Downloads/converted.dmg

Using Carbon Copy Cloner 4 to create encrypted bootable HFS+ clones from APFS source

Here's what worked

Download the High Sierra installer from the App Store.
Run the installer, choosing the external clone disk as the target. This will automatically create a new Recovery HD partition associated with the target disk.
Reboot from the external disk. Hold down option key during startup to select the boot disk.
Enable FileVault encryption as usual from the Security & Privacy panel in System Preferences.

Additional Notes

You can reboot from your internal drive for better performance, after enabling FileVault on the external. The encryption task will continue as long as you're plugged into power and the external disk is connected.
It may take several hours, or even days, before encryption is done, depending on the volume of data to be encrypted.
You can view encryption task progress using the Terminal command diskutil cs list

What didn't work

There are some articles posted about how to clone the internal disk Recovery HD volume to any other drive, but I didn't have success with them:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         499.4 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +499.4 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Mac-HD                  431.9 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 22.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                518.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

$ sudo hdiutil create ~/Desktop/Recovery_HD.dmg -srcdevice /dev/disk1s3
hdiutil: create failed - No such file or directory

I didn't find any articles that specifically addressed the case where the source disk is APFS format.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Convert a plain disk “legacy image” so that it can be mounted

Using Carbon Copy Cloner 4 to create encrypted bootable HFS+ clones from APFS source

Related Question