Time Machine backup of a sparsebundle

Hello everyone. I have Googled and looked through the forum in vain to find an answer to this one:
Does Time Machine support backing up another machine's Time Machine backup?
By support I mean; open up the sparsebundle (the backup in question is from a remote machine) and only back up the differences. If so, how does it deal with a sparsebundle being updated whilst it backs it up?
To clarify, my setup is as follows:
A laptop with airport connection to
A Mac Mini with 2 external drives.
The laptop does hourly Time Machine backups to one of the Mac Mini's external drives.
The Mac Mini does hourly Time Machine backups of one of it's external drives to the other external drive.
So, to recap, my worries are two:
1. Will the Mac Mini Time Machine look into the sparsebundle backup on one of the external drives, look for changes and only back those up to the other drive?
2. Will the Mac Mini Time Machine realise when the sparsebundle is being filled by the Laptop Time Machine and either leave it alone (potentially causing it to never get backed up) or somehow deal with the sparsebundle changing under it's feet?
Any answers appreciated.
M@

See #C12 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

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Time Machine backup of open sparsebundle

I have my Library/Mail folder encrypted as a sparsebundle (I use an alias to it for Mail.app to access it.) Throughout the day, TM backs up my Library folder (including the alias) as well as the sparsebundle file.
My concern is about how the sparsebundle file is backed up.. I've noticed that the timestamp on the sparsebundle file doesn't change, but that when I go inside, various files there have recent timestamps.
Question is if TM is making copies of the recent, changed sparsebundle and if it does so even though I have it mounted?
Thanks,
Jay

Hi Jay,
My understanding of TM is that it will backup images if they are mounted. I have some backup images that I have had to exclude from TM backups because I don't want to waste space on redundant data.
I'm a skeptic though, so I'd suggest that you look at, or restore if you have to, a small part of the backup that should have changed and see if it really is the latest data.
I haven't used a sparsebundle for mail, so I'm wondering about the granularity of the contents in the bundles: are they folders, or can you extract individual mail messages? My guess is folders given the minimum bundle size.
Hope it helps,
Chet

Time Machine backup and main drive corrupted. Help! (REWARD OFFERED)

Here's the deal:
I have a Macbook Pro and a Mac Mini both runnign Snow Leopard. I use the Mac Mini as a kind of media center / server, it has a few external drives connected to it. On of these drives (1GB) is dedicated to Time Machine, the Mac Mini (80 GB hard drive) backs up to it directly and the Macbook Pro (500 GB hard drive) does it over the network (Time Machine created a sparsebundle). This has worked well for years now. Occasionally I got the error that Time Machine needed to start a new backup because the old one was corrupt. That happened about 2-3 times a year (did the same thing when I backued up via USB). Now about 2 weeks ago, that error came up and I just let the Macbook Pro on overnight and connected the ethernet cable for faster transfer.
When I woke up, the Macbook Pro didn't respont at all, spinning beachball, no response at all beside mouse movement. I let it do it's thing for another 10 hours (while I was at work) and just held down the power button to power off and restart it. But all I got was the gray-on-gray flashing folder with the question mark in it, that's what you get when the Mac can't find bootable partitions. So I popped in the OSX Snow Leopard install disk, ran disk utility. It saw the hard drive, but no partition (i.e. Machintosh HD) on it. I checked the Time Machine backup and the sparsebundle was 300 GB (the Macbook Pro had 400 GB used, the remaining 100 GB were free). There is no way to restore from an unfinished Time Machine backup...
First thing I did was clone the internal (Macbook Pro) hard drive to a DMG disk image using DiskDrill (the only program I found that could recognize the drive at all, not even DiskWarrior could). I also bought the exact same hard drive model and partitioned it like the cloned the corrupted hard drive to the new one using ddrescue (a command line tool that doesn't quit upon i/o errors but proceeds and tries to recover as much as it can). It copied everything except 65 kilobytes, the corrupted drive seemed to be physically damaged in a bunch of sectors relatively at the beginning of the disk. Since I had now an exact copy on a fresh, healthy drive, I went crazy trying out Disk Warrior (didn't recognize the drive at all), data rescue, testdisc, p a Windows isk, etc. Only R-Studio (on windows) showed the EFI and Macintosh HD partitions on there, they started and ended on the same sectors on the corrupted drive and its clone. After some research, I figured that the partition table was corrupt so I reformated the clone disk using the OSX Snow Leopard install disk (1 HFS Journaled Partition with GUID Partition table). R-Studio showed the EFI and Macintosh HD on that reformated drive, again, same sectors as before. So I figured I could just copy just the bytes where the Macintosh HD starts from the corrupted drive to the clone (using ddrescue). That worked, after almost 24 hours, I had the clone drive with a "disk1" partition on it that even disk utility could see.
Now I was able to run Disk Warrior on it, but all it could do was recover a few Application folders (Resource-Folders and lproj-stuff), about 100 MB in total. It couldn't repair more of catalog file apparently. Luckily, Time Machine backed up quite a bit (300 GB out of 400 GB of data) and I was able to manually copy all the Dokuments, Desktop, user Library, Applications, Music, Download and Movies. Unfortunatley, only a little bit of the Pictures folder was copied. iPhoto library (80 to 100 GB) was nowhere to be found, backup must have failed right then. I can salvage the drives (time machine drive, original hard drive with a few broken sectors, DMG-image of that drive, 1-1 copy of that drive with partition table repaired) but that only gives me files with numeric names and today's date on teh JPEGs (instead of the date the picture was taken).
Is there any way I can recover that iPhoto library? It appears the catalog file got corrupted because the hard drive (only 8 months old...) failed on a few sectors. If I understand it correctly, the catalog file on HFS+ file systems is where the folder structure and file names are stored in a B-Tree. I can't imagine that some i/o error during backup can totally annihilate that file when it was working perfectly before. Here's a few things I want to try out but haven't figured out how so far:
- Time Machine had to start a new backup. There's plenty of free space on that drive so there's a good chance there's old data left on it. Is there a way to restore files (including file names) and fodlers from deleted time machine backups?
- Is there any way to re-build that catalog file from what is there left on the original hard drive? I can't imagine 65 kilobytes destroys it all.
- Are there other ways to recover my iPhoto Library? The raw JPEG (and AVI) files with correct file names or metadata would suffice.
Thanks in advance for any help, I'll actually reward the person with a working solution, 5 years of photo memories are somewhat important. It really ***** that a failure during a backup destroys that...

Final Update:
The catalog file on the original hard drive could not be fixed. Seems like Mac OSX tried to repair the catalog file while the sectors this file resides on failed. To make things worse the partition table was also broken beyond repair, even overwriting the sectors with a new correct partition table didn't help. DiskWarrior found less then 100 MB worth of stuff, mainly Applications folders.
I recovered pretty much everything from the incomplete Time Machine backup by right-clicking the sparsebundle and browsing through the folders with the long alphanumeric names, looking for the version of the folder with the most files in there. All I was missing was part of the ~/Pictures folder, i.e. photobooth pictures and the whole iPhoto Library. My best option was to recover these files using data recovery tools.
DiskDrill proved to be the absolute best, fast, responsive, efficient, and the only one able to mount the DMG-file with no valid file system on it. As there were many i/o errors and broken sectors on the original hard drive, I made a copy of it using a free command line tool called ddrescue (the standard dd tool just aborted when it encountered the i/o error). ddrescue copied the whole drive to a DMG image, I had 56 kilobytes with errors on the first pass, but it managed to shrink that down to just 4 kilobytes (wow!) after the second pass where it tries to re-read the broken secors. It took about 24 hours for a 512 GB 2.5" drive (5400 rpm) but well worth it. Be advised that ddrescue is really persistent and tries everything to recover those last errorneous bytes. At the very end of the process, the read/write head of the hard drive just goes wild trying to catch the data on the sectors with different momentum. This works but I assume this is pretty damaging for the original drive. I also copied it all to a new hard drive (again using ddrescue) and tried partition and catalog repair tools on that (DiskWarrion, testdiks, pdisk, etc.). Still no hint of a good result.
I made a deep scan on the clone hard drive with DiskDrill. At the end (after about 8 hours over USB) it found 13 partition (I assume that's the Macintosh HD, EFI and some DMG files lying around) and hundreds of thousands of pictures. I restored some JPG files just to check the quality, some were damaged, some were good with all the EXIF data intact. I just made it copy all JPG files into a folder. I know the pictures taken from my camera produce JPGs larger than 1 MB and smaller than 5 MB, so I sorted them by size and moved the smaller and larger files into seperate folders. I took the remaining folder (100 GB) and just dragged it into iPhoto. It imported them overnight. Auto-Split by events and I got my library back, alas with different file names, originals and edited versions side by side, lots of duplicates, some damaged, some not. But hey, all the pictures in chronological order. Okay there was also one large event with all the JPGs without valid EXIF data landed inside, iPhoto just takes the file creation date (i.e. the date where the recovered file was copied). As far as I can tell, these are all just data corpses, halfway overwritten copies, random pictures from the internet, desktop pictures, etc.
I started to work my way back through the events, deleting the duplicates and renaming the events. There's an app called "Duplicate Annihilator" which apparently can find duplicate pictures in iPhoto and mark them for you. The free version only does 500 pictures but if it works, I'll get the full version. It can mark th eduplicate photos by adding something to the picture comment in iPhoto so you can manually review it all. Good stuff!

Time Machine Backup Error. Time machine could not delete the backup disk image .sparsebundle

Time Machine is giving an error message. Time Machine couldnt complete the backup. I am using the Seagate GoFlex Home. Error message states Time Machine could not delete the backup disk image "/volumes/Go Flex Home Backup/iMAc.sparsebundle". Does anybody have any ideas?

I have deleted all files in the Time Machine backup via Windows, Finder, and GoFlex UI.
I think this is your problem.. you need to follow the exact setup from seagate to get TM running again.. please read the manual... I do not have one but I do have another brand of NAS and setting up TM involves a fairly complex set of instructions.. because it is not a native Apple device.. your computer does not recognise it as TM capable.. you need to use the work around the manual will explain.

My Time machine won't back up. Recently updated to OS x 10.7.5. Error message is as follows: "The backup disk image "/Volumes/Time Machine Backup/Scott's MacBook Pro.sparsebundle" is already in use." What is wrong and how do I fix it? Thanks.

My Time machine won't back up. Recently updated to OS x 10.7.5. Error message is as follows: "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Time Machine Backup/Scott’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle” is already in use." What is wrong and how do I fix it? Thanks.

Have you tried restarting the computer? Also, see Time Machine Error from this pages sidebar under More Like This.

Time machine backup seems to only have a Sparsebundle folder

I have had my MacBook for a couple of years and have only just got round to backing it up. I set off Time Machine lat night for a 200Gb backup. This morning I checked it and the Time machine backup seems to only have a Sparsebundle folder of 1000s of small files but apparently no iTunes or photos??
Any ideas????

Thanks Mike,
I'm a bit new to Macs really and thought that once backed up, on my NAS system I would be able to view the photos etc. but I presume this isn't the case and I should not back up the photos as part of the Time Machine backup and back these up seperately in order to view them remotely etc?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

HT3275 Time Machine backup not completed because "the backup disk image ....sparsebundle already in use"

Time Machine backup not completed because the "backup disk image"/Volumes/Data/MacBookAir.sparsebundle" is already in use. ??

Reboot the TC.. this is most common issue since Mountain Lion.
Look at the More Like This just on the right column.

"Permission denied" on sparsebundle after first Time Machine backup

I've been using an encrypted sparsebundle for several months. Yesterday I bought a new Apple Airport Time Capsule, and created my first Time Machine backup. Today when I double-click the sparsebundle, instead of being prompted to enter my password, I receive a Warning dialog box saying "The following disk images couldn't be opened" with the sparsebundle listed next to "Permission denied." According to Get Info, my account does have Read & Write access to the sparsebundle.
How can I get access to my 4.5 GB of encrypted data?

Thanks for the response. In my case, when I booted into my cloned backup and ran from that, I was able to open the sparsebundle normally. Then when I returned to my original system, it too worked normally. Although I'm relieved I didn't lose my data, it's all very mystifying. It particularly concerns me that no online source seems to be able to explain the nature of the error message I received!
I did repair permissions before posting here, to no avail.
So that terminal command will turn your encrypted sparsebundle into an unencrypted sparsebundle, without prompting for the password? That's alarming.

Since upgrading to Lion, my time machine backups are failing - error message: The backup disk image "/Volumes/Jackie Scanlon's Time Caps/Jacqueline Drabczynska's MacBook.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1). Any ideas?

Since upgrading my Macbook to Lion, the time machine backups are failing - error message: "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Jackie Scanlon's Time Caps/Jacqueline Drabczynska’s MacBook.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)." I have rebooted the TIme Capsule and it worked OK, but don't want to do that every time. Any suggestions? Thanks

Any new info on this?
I had the exact same problem and went crazy and spent a hecka lot of time trying to deal with my brand new 2TB Time Capsule and almost brand new MacBook Pro. Then I thought I fixed it...and I tried SO MANY things, I don't really know what did it...except taking out any apostrophe's in names of stuff that Apple puts in there...BUT...now it's back.
Grrr...

I'm getting an error message on my time machine backup: "The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/MacBook.sparsebundle" is already in use." Any suggestions?

I'm getting an error message on my time machine backup: "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/MacBook.sparsebundle” is already in use." Any suggestions?

Excellent apple networking on Lion or ML is usually the issue.
Reboot the TC.. if that don't fix it.. reboot the whole network.. modem.. router.. TC.. clients.. restart in that order.
There are tools.. download the real tool if you have lion..
For ML you are stuck with toyland.. AU 6.1 .. good luck with the plastic hammer.
Read C12 and C17
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time Machine backups to OS X Server 10.8 fail with "The backup disk image "Volumes/Backup6/macname.sparsebundle" is already in use" Error

Connecting about 100 Macs running Mavericks and about half of them are getting "The backup disk image "Volumes/Backup6/macname.sparsebundle" is already in use" error.
Screenshot -
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s87/sh/d03288e2-4ad7-4466-957b-2b9b4fcdea55/71afa 07540fd89e5f9a7eabfc96b4f1e
This was happening with our 10.8 environment and when we migrated to Mavericks, I rebuilt the OS X MacMini Server. Seems worse now with 10.9
Most discussions advise in restarting TimeCapsule or network device. However restarting OS X Server everyday is not a solution. Any advice in resolving this issue is appreciated.
Thanks! Corbin

I also had to restart the server and client after applying the "fix" I described above. Basically, no user should have multiple, simultaneous file sharing sessions on the server. But even clearing the user sessions does not resolve the problem beyond the next Time Machine backup, so I also tried disabling and enabling file sharing, but the problem also returns after doing this. Only restarting both the client and server after clearing the sessions has worked for me when I have this problem. The problem may return much later, but this work aroudn definitely works as a temporary solution.
Next time I encounter this problem I will try restarting just the server or just the client, because it is unlikely that the problem exists due to something on both systems. Server 3.x is definitely not as stable as it should be, but for my use, it is getting the job done.

Time Machine Backup error - The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Extreme.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1).

I am getting a Time Machine backup error "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Extreme.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)."
Then a Finder window pops up with the backup directory in it. When I open it I see all the backups that were completed successfully and then the one there is simply always shows the data and .inProgress. I thought that maybe if I could delete the one that is perpetually in progress it would start a new one and run fine, but I won't let me delete it.

Reboot the TC.. or go to the 5.6 utility.. and disconnect all users.. to force it to reconnect.
C17 in troubleshooting.. to give more specifics to Kappy's comment.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

How do I use time machine backup to restore onto a different computer

I am trying to troubleshoot the best way to back up my Mac. I have been a mac user since 20009 and always used a time machine. The two times I have needed it for backup, my computer did not read the portion the backup was. You could tell under disk utility the space was used. Just before the need of backup, it was backing up. So, I am wondering if I need to use a different method. I lost all of my Christmas 2015 movies. My computer did some weird thing with passwords and it needs some resetting I had to do with the support team on the phone. The support person could not figure out how to access the back up on time capsule. I noticed the password resetting made my computer name different by putting a 3 behind the name I assigned it.
One thought that has crossed my mind is can you use the time machine backup and open it up on a completely different computer? If so, I should have been able to someone access my information. I would like to know the answer and how do it so I know in case this ever happens again and so that I can rely on this expensive back up machine I have purchased two different times on two different computers and never been able to actually use.

Are you running Yosemite.. because it is the cause of loads of problems.
As to opening the TM backup from another computer.. yes you can.
Please read our TM expert Pondini.
Q14-17 on restore here.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
Particularly as you will see Q17 and it will reference the prior info you need.
I have gone through this with several people.. and I have a post showing a manual file location and restore.
Can't access old files on time capsule
But not from Yosemite.. it has its own bunch of bugs.. as mentioned. Good luck with those.
I also strongly recommend people use a secondary backup method.. there are excellent third party.. I use Carbon Copy Cloner.. it is reasonable price.. $40 based on standard rsync.. and will create either bootable clones to a local drive or sparsebundle on a time capsule etc.
The bootable clone is the ideal way to recover files. since it is based on a simple computer reboot and then access of files that are in exactly the same place as you left them.. TM backs up in a most complicated manner.
See how tm works here. The top couple of articles and how it is different to clones. As Pondini suggests.. using both is no bad thing.
http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
This is also useful for yosemite.. it is not working as TM used to.
Find files in Yosemite.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6681850?searchText=time%20machine%20yosemit e#27139370
While in Time Machine, press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible. Select the one you want and navigate to the files you want to restore.
I am not sure why your previous use of TM failed.. In the midst of all its problems it does still work ok.. as mostly people can recover stuff they do.. albeit it needs a lot more messing than is typical Apple.

How do I delete time machine backups if I can't zoom back in time?

Hi,
I'v been backing up my 250GB HD using time machine very successfully over the years. I store additional home movies that aren't on my HD on my time capsule machine in a seperate folder from the backups that are made daily. My 250GB HD is now full and it has been duplicated and placed on a much larger 1TB HD drive back inside my iMac. Because it is a new HD, time machine is wanting to do a new 250GB backup of it (which is ok), BUT there is not enough space on my time machine drive to do a 250GB backup. I need to delete the prior time machine backups to make space. However, because the HD is new, I'm unable to zoom back in time with time machine and delete backups from the time capsule. When I open time capsule in finder I see a .sparsebundle folder which I assume must contain all my old HD time machine backups. To free up time capsule space, can I simply delete the .spersebundle folder? I'm nervous to do that and don't want to mess anything up, so I'm asking for advise. Any advise would be much appreciated. Thx.

brettnbee wrote:
Hi,
I'v been backing up my 250GB HD using time machine very successfully over the years. I store additional home movies that aren't on my HD on my time capsule machine in a seperate folder from the backups that are made daily.
That's a problem, as you now see. When you get this sorted out, see #Q3 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for an explanation and some workarounds.
because the HD is new, I'm unable to zoom back in time with time machine and delete backups from the time capsule.
You can see and delete individual backups from an old drive, per #E3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. Deleting a lot of them will take a very long time, of course.
When I open time capsule in finder I see a .sparsebundle folder which I assume must contain all my old HD time machine backups. To free up time capsule space, can I simply delete the .spersebundle folder?
Yup, that's an option, too but will also take quite a while. See #Q5 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for details.
Whatever you do, by all means, connect via Ethernet cable if at all possible. It will still be slow, but be 2-3 times faster than a good wireless connection.

First time machine backup from MacBook Pro 13" (early 2011) on time capsule is extremely slow - unusable!

I recently bought a Time Capsule 2TB.
First I set it up to create a new wifi network parallel to my existing wifi network. The first Time Machine backup on my MBP 13 connected via ethernet cable finished overnight (under 10 hrs for about 150 GB), as expected.
Then I found that my MBP was logging into my old network more often than to the time capsule network so that backups were not being made regularly. So I re-configured the Time Capsule to extend the exisitng network - all fine. Except that now Time Machine said it couldn't find the existing backup. After trying logging out and in, etc. I eventually deleted that sparsebundle to force Time Machine to start again new.
Now I get an estimated time of 2 - 3 days for the first backup - even via ethernet cable. Sometimes it hangs up and says something like 4000 days... I can't afford to hook my MBP up to the time capsule or even stay at home for this time to let it finish, and I know it should be faster than that!
I've tried a few of the tips I found so far in the forums, such as excluding my home folder from Spotlight, or even turning Spotlight off, but nothing has helped so far. Perhaps I missed some important step on the way.
Can anyone give me a reliable step by tep method to solve this problem. I don't want a geeky workaround, I want to plug in (o better, be in my wifi network) and make the backup work like Time Machine is supposed to do it. And I would like to keep on using Spotlight, too.
Thanks in advance!
Robin

Unless you have a desktop Mac you can back up to over your network, your choices are:
Spend a bunch on a Time Capsule, kind of a waste if you already have a wireless router.
Spend $100 or so on an external HD and have some inconvenience until Iomega updates.
Risk losing all your data.
It's your call, but a no-brainer to me.
Better: get a portable external. Once you get the Iomega working, start making regular "clones" to the portable and take it off-site so you're also protected against fire, flood, theft, etc.

Time Machine backup of a sparsebundle

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