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[Tip] Using Mac OS X DMG to keep workspaces

July 14th, 2009 by Eugene Ostroukhov

I’ve been using Mac OS X r/w disk images (DMG) to keep workspace for a couple months now – and I think it is great. Currently my workspace size is slightly above 2Gb:

I didn’t notice any performance degrade – in both build and IDE operation.
I can easily back-up/restore/clone workspace. I attempted to use Time Capsule/Time Machine for workspace backup – but they are completely unfriendly for the large amount of the small files that make up the workspace.
(Luckily, haven’t tried this yet) – can be moved to another Mac in a matter of minutes.

I think it would also make sense to keep the whole dev environment (Eclipse SDK/target platform/workspace) on the DMG so it is easy to switch between older/newer versions – but I didn’t configure it that way yet.

DMG should be excluded from Time Machine back-up or TM will copy the whole image file time each time there’s some change in the workspace.

5 Responses

Eric Rizzo writes:
July 14th, 20096:53 pmat

How about posting a step-by-step explanation of how to set this up? I’m new to the Nation of Mac and don’t know how to create a disk image. Sure, I could look up the info using Google and figure out what you’ve done, but it would be nice to see exactly what you’ve done.
A screencast would be ideal, but a simple description and/or screenshots would be good enough.

Reply
- zzhou writes:
  July 14th, 20097:31 pmat
  
  I could never write it as well as Apple does – http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1578
  I don’t use sparse disk images and I don’t use encription/password protection.
  
  Note – you can resize the image later, so there is no reason to try and make it future-proof-large.
  
  Reply
  - ekke writes:
    July 14th, 20098:21 pmat
    
    An how do you your backups ?
    I’m using normaly SuperDuper do backup DMGs.
    Great Idea to use DMGs to have it all transportable.
    
    Reply
    - zzhou writes:
      July 14th, 20098:32 pmat
      
      I wrote a simple automator workflow that runs daily from iCal – it unmounts the image and copies it to remote disk. So no need for SuperDuper and other applications – it’s a simple file.
      
      Reply
- Frank Sauer writes:
  July 15th, 20098:39 pmat
  
  Welcome to Mac Nation, you won’t regret it (besides, resistance is futile)
  
  Reply