• Re: Files missing from disk image

    From Martin S Taylor@hogwash@mRaErMtOiVnEstaylor.TcHoImS to uk.comp.sys.mac on Sun Jan 18 11:20:04 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

    On 15 Dec 2025, J. J. Lodder wrote
    (in article<1rndtdo.b53ep4mqgly8N%nospam@de-ster.demon.nl>):

    From the olden days: A disk image was marked as 'modified'
    even if you only looked at it. (without changing anything)

    If you modified a copy by adding files to it,
    then looked dat the original one, the older unmodified version
    would take precedence in back-ups,
    thereby losing the modifications.

    No idea whether Apple still does that,

    Yes they do! That could well be the reason.

    Note:

    And more from the olden days: Disk images for storing things permanently
    are a thoroughly bad idea, because no recovery is possible.
    If a disk image goes corrupt and refuses to mount that's it,
    you have permanently lost whatever was on it.
    And worse: you might have been carrying a corrupt disk image along,
    for years, through many back-ups,
    without noticing it is no longer available.
    Filevault encryption of whole volumes is much safer.
    Yes, I only use disk images for backups. Is there a better way to store folders in an encrypted way without turning Filevault on and encrypting the whole volume? Ideally so that each file in the folder is encrypted independently?

    MST

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  • From nospam@nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) to uk.comp.sys.mac on Sun Jan 18 21:07:59 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

    Martin S Taylor <hogwash@mRaErMtOiVnEstaylor.TcHoImS> wrote:

    On 15 Dec 2025, J. J. Lodder wrote
    (in article<1rndtdo.b53ep4mqgly8N%nospam@de-ster.demon.nl>):

    From the olden days: A disk image was marked as 'modified'
    even if you only looked at it. (without changing anything)

    If you modified a copy by adding files to it,
    then looked at the original one, the older unmodified version
    would take precedence in back-ups,
    thereby losing the modifications.

    No idea whether Apple still does that,

    Yes they do! That could well be the reason.

    OK.

    Note:

    And more from the olden days: Disk images for storing things permanently are a thoroughly bad idea, because no recovery is possible.
    If a disk image goes corrupt and refuses to mount that's it,
    you have permanently lost whatever was on it.
    And worse: you might have been carrying a corrupt disk image along,
    for years, through many back-ups,
    without noticing it is no longer available.
    Filevault encryption of whole volumes is much safer.

    Yes, I only use disk images for backups. Is there a better way to store folders in an encrypted way without turning Filevault on and encrypting
    the whole volume? Ideally so that each file in the folder is encrypted independently?

    If that really is what you want I guess encrypted zips
    are the only practical way.
    But why provide a pointer to the targets?

    But why would you want to?
    There really is nothing wrong with Filevault.
    It encrypts on the block level, not on the file level,
    so it is totally transparent. (to you) [1]

    And all the usual recovery tools apply.
    Those tools don't care what is inside the blocks they recover,

    Jan

    [1] It even encrypts the empty space,
    leaving no room to insert malware.


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