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Presently I am attempting to back up my whole computer's primary hard drive to an ISO file. When I attempt to do this using Disk Utility, I perform the following steps:

  1. Open disk utility and choose the disk I want to create an image from in the left pane.
  2. Click on File->New->Disk Image from "MyDisk"
  3. Then I choose Image format->DVD/CD write master

Disk Utility runs for a long time, then as it nears the end of the operation it gives me the error "Filename too long" and quits.

As an alternative, I attempted to create an ISO file using hdiutil, but receive an error after the file reaches a size of 2 GB:

sh-3.2# sudo hdiutil makehybrid -iso -o /Volumes/Grieg/ChopinSnowLeopard.iso  /Volumes/ChopinSnowLeopard
Creating hybrid image...


hdiutil: makehybrid failed - Operation not permitted

If I try this alternative command, I receive a different error:

sh-3.2# hdiutil create -srcfolder /Volumes/ChopinSnowLeopard /Volumes/Grieg/ChopinSnowLeopard.dmg
diskimages-helper: DI_kextDriveDisconnect returned 268435459 ((ipc/send) invalid destination port).

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to resolve either of these problems? TIA.

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Not an answer to your question, but there is no reason to back up to an ISO file. That is not an optimal file format or backup format for a backup of this size. Why not just clone the drive? – mankoff May 26 '12 at 13:07
Thank you--I used a cloning tool and it has worked great! – Roger May 27 '12 at 16:11

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