How to delete a sparse bundle

I have added a new Mini to my network and repurposed a former Mini. I would like to remove the sparse.bundle for the former mini to free up space and start a new TM backup.
I am unable to delete or mount the former Mini sparse.bundle. Disk Utility doesn't recognize the image for mounting. Trash attempts to delete the item, but after 6 hours with the message Items to Delete: 0, nothing has happened.
Trying to have Time Machine on the repurposed Mini continue with backups fails as well.
Is there a way in Terminal or something to delete this file which must be damaged without erasing the whole TC and starting over. I do have other sparse.bundles from other machines on there I would like to keep.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Molson2043 wrote:
Is there a way in Terminal or something to delete this file which must be damaged without erasing the whole TC and starting over.
First mount the internal Time Capsule disk, assumed in the example below to have the default name "Data". Launch Terminal, then type these commands:
cd /Volumes/Data
ls
That's a lower-case letter "L" at the beginning of that last command. You should see all your "sparsebundle" volumes.
Then type this command (including a trailing space) but do not yet press "return":
sudo rm -rf
Now open the "Data" volume. Drag the "sparsebundle" file you want to delete from the "Data" volume's Finder window to the Terminal window. This should cause the path and name of the volume you want to delete to be copied into the Terminal window. Now select the Terminal window. Double-check that the correct "sparsebundle" file is in the command, then press "return". You'll be prompted for your administrative password.
If you're at all unsure that you can do this safely, then you probably shouldn't try it this way.

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I backup two computers over a home wireless network to a Time Capsule. But there are three TM sparsebundles on the TC; one is from a computer that is long gone. I need to create space on the TC as I got an error message stating that; I have a new disk and TM is trying to create a new backup for that.
I read the TM FAQs that are often cited in Discussions but I don't know what vintage those recommendations are; can someone give me an up-to-date proceedure for deleting the uneeded sparsebundle? It is 123 GB and my TC is 500 GB.
Thansk;
Bruce

I tried this:
If a sparse bundle is very large, and OSX says it will take many hours to delete it, there is a faster, but more tedious, way:
•Cancel the deletion.
•Right-click the sparse bundle in the Finder and select Show Package Contents.
•Open the bands folder (it may take a while to show the contents).
•Select a large number of bands (up to about 8000 at a time), and delete (trash) them.
•When they’re all deleted, delete the sparse bundle.
I got an error message:
"This operation cannot be completed because df4 [one of the bands] is in use."
Next step?

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http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/TCQ5.html

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Solved the problem! after a hint by 'nick_harambee', dated Feb 21, 2009 (see at the bottom of: https://discussions.apple.com/message/9036656#9036656) in which he suggested to enable 'guest access' in the Airport Utility tab on the Time Machine..!
Instead of all failed attempts to change the permissions with 'chflags' (for which you don't have the permission ;-)..
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Thanks 'nick_harambee'! for the simple hint,
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There is a bug that is killing spotlight and TM in latest Lion update.. 10.7.5
Try turning this off and see what happens.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19858557#19858557
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You can just copy them to USB drive plugged into your computer.. then erase the TC and copy them back.. painful.. yes, Tme consuming.. absolutely.. but that is the only way to fix it if the TC goes nuts and you really want to keep those other backups..
Aint Apple just great how they test their updates so throughly.

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My wife recently migrated from a MacBook to a MacBook Pro. She was using TM to backup to Time Capsule. We set up a new user account on the old MacBook for my daughter and changed the computer name in sharing preferences on BOTH machines to initiate brand new backups for each. MacBook Pro was initially backed up to a new volume, but then switched back to backing up to the original sparse bundle. The MacBook is also backing up to the same bundle although both machines have different names. What's going on and how do I fix it? My gut tells me to start over by restarting TC and deleting old sparse bundles before backing up each machine. Any suggestions?

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I'm running out of disk space on my Mac Book Air. I have used 'What Size' and it shows me that I have 36gb of data as sparse bundle file.
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Thanks

The sparse bundle you found in WhatSize is indeed a FileVault Home, and the fact that it is currently in /Users/.nelsonesparon (with a leading period) rather than in /Users/nelsonesparon (without the leading period) indicates that you are currently logged into that very account. All the files and folders that currently appear to be in your "Home Folder" - your Documents, Music, Movies, etc - are actually stored in the "bands" of that sparse bundle.
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You make a sparse bundle.. but don't ask me how that is different to a bundle of savings. Sparsebundle is what the special TM backup is called. It is a kind of disk image I think.. what makes it sparse is unclear as well.
Anyway.. you are on Lion I guess.. download 5.6 utility for Lion. http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
So you can get a utility that does utilities.. and not pretty faces.
And go to the disk page and erase the drive.. a quick erase is plenty and is pretty fast.

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I do not see how the two are related..
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I get this error message when I try to back up my laptop:
' Time machine could not complete the backup. The backup disc image "/Volumes/Data/Lou Ann Buesing's Mac Book Pro. sparse bundle' is already in use. "
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Reboot the TC.. Sometimes you need to reboot the whole network.
This is what comes of Lion and then made worse in Mountain Lion of Apple not spending enough time to fix the bugs.
Read C12 in pondini.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
C17 can be related I think.

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Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? There is only one sparse bundle but when I enter time machine I don't see my historic backups. I use a synology DS212 for my time machine. Started a new backup which is 218gb but it says 618 gb is occupied therefore it looks like 2 or 3 backups are still on the disk. Before my NAS issues the last backup was in 2014. As you can see there is a second sparse bundle from 2012. Not sure what that is.

This is an old message now, but what happened to me similarly was:
I had a major computer crash and through complicated pathways ended up reinstalling (Mavericks) as a new user (long story).
At least I had good Time Machine backups on an NAS drive (Synology DS212j), or so I thought - when I started Time Machine up again, the old backup file was gone, replaced by a new one using my "new computer" name. The old file was gone both by directly mounting the NAS drive and by clicking "Enter Time Machine".
It's like I had {OldShareName}.sparsebundle and then it was replaced by {NewShareName}.sparsebundle, all of the old info vanished.
(I have spent a week finding old files elsewhere and have completed a satisfactory self-restore. It pays to "archive" [my own variation of] as well as "back-up".)
My belief is that if this were a wired-netword-drive, e.g. plugged right into my iMac with a USB cable, then the old file would have remained.
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As usual when things get complicated with computers (not just Apple computers) there was never a warning message. Something like "YOU'RE ABOUT TO DELETE A TIME MACHINE BACK-UP FILE!!!" would have made my life a lot simpler.
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Charles

How to delete "sparse image"?

how to delete "sparse image"?

You should be able to delete it via the Finder, as you would any other file, folder, disk image, etc.
(I don't recall for sure, but you'll probably have to supply the password.)

How do I change the password of an encrypted Sparse Bundle disk image?

I tried to change the password of an encrypted 'Sparse Bundle' disk image but it seems Disk Util doesn't let me choose this type of disk image for the Change Password function (Menu Imgaes->Change Password...)
How am I supposed to change the password? Do I really have to create a new disk image with a new password and copy the old one? (I'm using the 256 bits encryption)

There is no error. Just nothing happens. The problem is a little different for the sparse image and the sparse bundle image. When using the menu command Images->Change Password... you get a file dialog where you must point to the image. The sparse image is selectable (not grayed) but when selected nothing else happens. The sparse bundle image is grayed out in the file dialog so you can't even select it.
Something else. When creating a new blank disk image it shows up in the left pane of the Disk Utility app. But after unmounting the images I'm left with Disk1, Disk2 in this list. Re-mounting doesn't change that. It seems rather useless as you can't do anything with them.
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I have a TM backup on a QNAP device. What I see is a folder with the computer name. The next level is a folder bands and two files - Info.plist and Info.backup.
Neither TimeMachine nor the Migration Tool recognizes the backup. The backuped computer was accidently erased.
I'm desperately looking for a solution!

That IS a sparse bundle disk image.
The data (including the normal directory structure) is spread over a huge number of 8 MB "band" files.
See the pink box in How Time Machine works its Magic for details. It shows one on a Time Capsule; the setup is the same on a NAS like your QNAP, but of course some of the names will be different.
As noted there, if you can mount and open the disk image inside the sparse bundle, you'll see your backups, as in the green box in the same link.
But if it's damaged, double-clicking it won't open it -- instead (after a few moments) you'll get an error message -- no recognizable file system, or unavailable, or the like. I don't think there are any data recovery tools that can examine the bands and extract data files from them.

How to delete a sparse bundle

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