Apple Disk Image

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The Apple dmg file (filename.dmg) is an Apple Disk Image. It is a file commonly used by the Mac OS X operating system. When opened, an Apple disk image is "mounted" as a volume within the Finder. Several Apple proprietary disk image formats can be used to create these images, including the Universal Disk Image Format (UDIF) and the New Disk Image Format (NDIF).

Apple disk images allow secure password protection as well as file compression and hence serves both security and file distribution functions. The dmg file is commonly used to distribute software over the Internet.

Using dmg files in MS Windows

Use 7-Zip to open a dmg file on Windows. My friends in California love 7-Zip and have talked me into using it. I now use it for almost all of my archiving needs. Using 7-Zip you can open the dmg file and extract all of the contents along with the directory structure.

When creating a disc image with the dmg format the image is compressed and check-summed, unlike with ISO image creation.

Convert dmg to ISO image

Use a command line program called dmg2img. DMG2IMG is an Apple's compressed dmg to standard (hfsplus) image disk file convert tool. http://vu1tur.eu.org/tools/ 

dmg2img <source file.dmg> <destination file.iso>

dmg with virtualbox

Fact: Only SOME dmg files are fully supported by virtualbox. Some are not supported. There is no single type of dmg. You may get lucky and be able to mount and use the dmg file with virtualbox. If not, then you should convert it to an ISO image.

IF NOT: http://www.crystalidea.com/mount-dmg-images-to-vmware-or-virtualbox

If attempting to run OS X in vmware it is reported that many images will work only with Intel processors. If the host machine has an AMD processor then the image has to be built for that processor type.

Related

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