Disk imaging - "sparse" vs. standard.

[Njord Noatun]

Some newbie questions about images:

1) Can I add to sparse images?
1a) If so, does the sparse image need to be manually booted for addition to take place?

2) As long as it is located on a separate volume, can I boot from sparse images?

3) Can I add to "standard" disk images?
3a) If so, does the "standard" disk image need to be manually booted for addition to take place?

If the answer to 1 and 2 is "yes", what are the practical reasons for choosing "standard" disk images as opposed to sparse images for backup, beyond differences in file size?

I am not sure if I formulated the questions appropriately and relevantly, but I would like to understand the implications of going one way or another before deploying my SD backup program.

Thank you.

Best regards,

[dnanian]

Some answers, I hope:

- Sparse images can be added to, yes. I don't know what you mean by "manually booted"...

- You cannot start up from a sparse image: they must be restored to a real drive.

- You cannot add to standard (read-only) images.