Compacting Sparse Disk Images

A lot of you have seen my screencast on how to make an encrypted sparse disk image. As I explained in the screencast, sparse disk images grow when add files into them but don’t shrink when you pull files out. As my sparse disk images used to bloat I would occaisionnally make a new one and copy the files into it and discard the old image. Recently however I discovered an automator workflow that compacts an existing sparse image without requiring you to take all those insane steps I used to. So lets walk through it now.

Step One … Load Automator

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Now some of you may be Automator veterans but for me it is just that funny looking icon I always pass over.

Step Two … First Script

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Click on the “Finder” category in the Library column then click and drag “Get Selected Finder Items” from the Actions Column into the work area of Automator.

Step Two … Second Script

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Click on the “Automator” category in the Library column then click and drag “Run Shell Script” from the Actions Column into the work area of Automator.

Step Three … Change Pass Input

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Change the “pass input” drop down from “to sdnin” to “as arguments”

Step Four … Remove Text from the Shell Window

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Step Five … Fill in the Window

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Type in the following in the window….

hdiutil compact “$@”

Step Six … Save It

Go to Automator’s File menu and “Save as Plug-in”. Give it a name like “Compact Sparse Image”. Also make sure “Plug-in for:” category says “Finder”.

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Using the Workflow

1. Find your sparse image in the finder.
2. Make sure it is unmounted
3. Cntrl(Right)-Click, Mouse down to Automator and run your script.

Now all of the above probably sounds like a lot of work but it really is not. Once you have it set up you can regularly compact your sparse images. Let me know if it works for you.

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