Here's a short guide on opening DMG files on Windows and extracting data from them.
Download DMG Extractor (it's free).
Once installed, DMG Extractor will run automatically.
Open DMG Extractor and select the DMG file you want to extract
Click the 'Open' menu icon on the top-left of the window.
If the DMG archive is password protected, DMG Extractor will prompt you for its password:
DMG Extractor will load the file you selected. If you have a large DMG file, a progress bar will show until the DMG file is loaded.
Now you should be able to see all the files contained within the DMG file and navigate folders and files.
Extract the files you want
Click 'Extract', next to the 'Open' button. You can choose whether to extract the whole of the DMG's contents into the same folder, or into a specific one chosen by you. If you don't need to extract all the files, just select the files you want and on the 'Extract' menu click 'Selected files to…'
That's it: extraction complete! Your selected files should now have been converted from the DMG file and saved onto your Windows computer ready for you to use.
The type or condition of a DMG file is no restriction for the Free DMG File Reader. The tool is flexible enough to open and read DMG files whether they are encryption or password protected. Moreover, corrupt DMG files can also be read with the tool successfully. How to create the DMG? On the toolbar of Disk Utility, there’s icon for the New Image, clicking on which produces the dialogue box: As we go through the entries, the specs for the new password protected DMG disk image are following: Save As sets the file name of the image file, e.g. My private data.dmg. Where sets the location of the image file. Open DMG Extractor and select the DMG file you want to extract. Click the 'Open' menu icon on the top-left of the window. If the DMG archive is password protected, DMG Extractor will prompt you for its password: DMG Extractor opening an encrypted DMG. DMG Extractor will load the file you selected. If you have a large DMG file, a progress bar.
There are times you need to share some sensitive data with associates or mates that you don’t want to share to anyone else or leave any possibilities for others to open and read/copy. One possibility would be to use password-protected packages like ZIP or RAR, but DMG may be slightly more convenient on a Mac.
What’s DMG?
Apple Disk Image is a disk image format commonly used by the macOS operating system. When opened, an Apple Disk Image is mounted as a volume within the Macintosh Finder1
Disk Utility
As in the previous DMG-related articles Disk Utility comes in handy when creating disk images.
You can find it under Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
How to create the DMG?
On the toolbar of Disk Utility, there’s icon for the New Image, clicking on which produces the dialogue box:
As we go through the entries, the specs for the new password protected DMG disk image are following:
- Save As sets the file name of the image file, e.g.
My private data.dmg. - Where sets the location of the image file.
- Volume name sets the name of the volume as it would appear in Finder later
- Volume size sets the estimated size of the DMG file. If you are going to share stuff, you probably know what would the maximum size be. For the document files you’d be safe with 10 MB.
- Volume Format is the disk format for the image that you may safely leave untouched.
- Encryption refers to the file encryption strength as we set the password. 256-bit AES encryption would make a nice choice here.
- Partitions would be fine with Single partition.
- Image Format is best to remain at read/write in order to enable later changes, e.g. if you need to add files into the image in future.
With everything filled in, hitting the Create button will create the image file at your given location and prompt you to enter password to access DMG:
Make sure to uncheck the Remember password in my keychain checkbox if you are willing to always enter password to access DMG, even on your own machine. Otherwise, if anyone opens the DMG file on the machine it was created on, they would not be prompted for the password because it would be pulled off the Keychain automatically.
How To Open A Password Protected Dmg
As you have created the DMG file, you can open it and drag your sensitive files to it in Finder. Once you have completed, make sure to unmount the image from the eject button by the image name .