The following is a partial list of DropDMG’s features, so that you can quickly
see what it can do and how it’s unique:
- Overview
- Create and convert disk images and archives with a simple
drag and drop. There are also many other convenient ways to
invoke DropDMG.
- DropDMG supports all the major formats, including compressed
.dmg files, .sparsebundle files, .zip and
.tar.gz archives, and hybrid disk images. Zlib disk images
and ZIP archives created by DropDMG are smaller than those
created by Disk Utility and the Finder.
- Configurations let you reuse common collections of settings, and
temporary options let you easily make one-off changes.
- Quickly burn files, folders, or disk images to CD or DVD.
Multi-session support lets you add files to an existing CD.
- Delivering Software
- Create .dmg disk image files, Apple’s recommended container
format
for deploying Mac OS X software.
- Design reusable layouts with background images and
pixel-perfect icon positioning. Add text boxes with custom
fonts, styles, shadows, and variables.
- Apply a license agreement that Mac OS X will display before the
user can install your software. Licenses support rich text and
multiple languages.
- Automatically renders a custom volume icon that badges your
application’s icon onto the white disk image icon, with the
proper 3D perspective.
- Make your disk images Internet-enabled so that Safari
automatically expands them into a folder after download.
- Burn CDs and DVDs with background pictures and icon layouts that
auto-open when the disc is inserted.
- Store your license agreements and layouts in open formats
(RTF, XML) under version control.
- Backups, Archival, and Cloning
- Disk images preserve Mac-specific metadata: resource forks,
Finder labels, creation dates, ownership, extended attributes,
etc.
- Save disk space and network transfer time by compressing your
files. Choose faster or more efficient compression.
- Split large files or folders into multiple segments to burn
them to optical discs or easily transfer them over a network.
- Verify the integrity of your backups and archives to ensure
that the media is still intact and that you’ll be able to
restore them if needed.
- Create a device image that records the exact contents of a data
CD or DVD. You can then burn bootable backup copies of the
disc, or double-click the disk image to access its contents as
though the disc were still in your optical drive.
- In one step, create a device image clone of an entire hard
drive, optimized for restoring using Apple Software Restore or
Disk Utility. This is useful for backups and for setting up
multiple computers in a lab.
- Optionally enter your administrator password so that DropDMG
can back up all your files, with proper permissions and
ownership, while unattended.
- Encryption
- Encrypt files that you want to keep private. DropDMG’s
encrypted, writable disk images are faster and safer than
Apple’s FileVault, but just as secure and searchable via Spotlight.
Compact them to reclaim unused space.
- Create encrypted, compressed disk images to securely transfer
files via e-mail, iDisk, or FTP or to store backups safely off-site.
- Choose from 128-bit and 256-bit AES encryption, approved by the
U.S. National Security Agency.
- Optionally store your passphrases in the Mac OS X keychain, so
that you can quickly create and access encrypted disk images,
without the hassle of double-typing or the risk of typos.
- Mount disk images at specific locations in the filesystem, so
that your applications can keep their support files encrypted.
- Change the passphrase of existing encrypted disk images.
- Mount encrypted, segmented disk images without having to enter
the passphrase separately for each segment.
- Advanced
- Runs multiple operations simultaneously, so you that you can
keep working while DropDMG processes in the background.
- Takes advantage of multiple processor cores for faster
compression and encryption.
- Keeps a detailed log of all the successful operations as well
as any errors, including statistics such as the throughput and
how much space was saved using compression. New log entries are also
reported via Growl.
- Fast disk image mounting: turn off verification to quickly
mount disk images, use shadow files, and mount encrypted disk
images without having to re-type the passphrase for each
segment.
- Get detailed information about your disk images: their formats,
partitions, compression ratios, checksums, etc.
- Easily queue up bulk operations for creating, converting,
mounting, verifying, getting info, burning, joining,
etc. If multiple encrypted disk images share a passphrase, you
only need to enter it once.
- Make your favorite destination folders stay in the list of
recent folders.
- Process the names of the output files to add the current date or
make the filename server-friendly.
- Automate via AppleScript, the dropdmg command-line tool,
and Automator.