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

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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.

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.

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!

Can't exclude folders from Time Machine backups

I am trying to exclude Folders from backups to preserve space.
Go into Time Machine preferences and Options - I can select + to Exclude Folders, and select a Folder, but on then selecting to Exclude nothing gets returned to the "Exclude these items from backups" form.
Help!

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Mails are stored on ~/Library/Mail, being ~ your user folder. As you are running Snow Leopard, it's easy to exclude your mails from your Time Machine backup.
Open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and add ~/Library/Mail to excluded items, so the next backup won't include mails. Note that you have to go to your user folder, in order to access to this directory

HT201250 How can I exclude mail from Time Machine backups?

How can I exclude mail from Time Machine backups?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Mails are stored on ~/Library/Mail, being ~ your user folder. As you are running Snow Leopard, it's easy to exclude your mails from your Time Machine backup.
Open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and add ~/Library/Mail to excluded items, so the next backup won't include mails. Note that you have to go to your user folder, in order to access to this directory

"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.

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

Had a recent crash on my macbook, was previously using OS 10.6 I think. Restored from recent Time Machine backup and updated to OS 10.8.2 and now I cannot open Logic Pro 9. I get a 'No entry' Icon and a not supported on this type of Mac message. I cannot

Had a recent crash on my macbook, was previously using OS 10.6 I think. Restored from recent Time Machine backup and updated to OS 10.8.2 and now I cannot open Logic Pro 9. I get a 'No entry' Icon and a not supported on this type of Mac message. I cannot update either as anything up to 9.1.1 tells me I don't need it yet 9.1.2 tells me I need an eligable Logic Pro Version was not found in applications.
All of my files are stored in a separate hard drive with only the actual app having been on my Macbook. Should I just reinstall?

Hi
To run Mouitain Lion you need to update Logic.
For the updaters to work the Logic application must be:
a) Within the Applications folder, and not in any sub-folder
b) Named "Logic Pro" with no extra numbers or spaces
CCT

Time Machine doesn't open backup screen

I have problems opening the time machine backups.
I use both a TC and a Synology disk station with TM, both seem to run well and TM makes backups every hour. No errors are reported and TM shows new backups are made successfully.
However when I try to open TM it stalls. Normally you get the "purple space background" layering your backups in time. I now only get one finder screen, the background goes black.....and then nothing.
I somehow hoped it would go away with Yosemite, but it stayed.
Who can help?

Question: If you make a new back-up and open it, could it also take a (very long) while to open as it is indexing? Or is "indexing" something it only does when using older bach-up sets after problems/ new setup?
The new backup should open practically instantly. You have no history and a clean simple new backup should be index and checked as part of making it.
Second thing I now remember is the problems started after using the TC back-up after a HD crash. My internal HD failed and I used the TC back-up to restore; with perfect result. But that probably has been the moment, TM wasn't functioning.
Yes, I think this is where the problem comes from. And you are now in a bit of a mess.. if you upgraded to Yosemite.. then whatever problems were there are multiplied. You cannot go backwards. So I think you might need to look at something major.
You cannot reinstall TM.. it is integrated into the OS. You really do need to do a clean install and import (using migrate your apps and files).
Before doing that I would use a software like Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your existing disk. And boot from it to check it is working.
Do a verify of the current install.. you will need to do this by booting to recovery area.. run disk utility and/or hardware tests.
OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support
Using Apple Hardware Test - Apple Support
In the end.. using CCC is a good replacement to TM.. it is simpler and seems to not get as messed up.. so you can continue using the install as is, but with CCC as your backup.. at the same time I think it is good to be planning for a completely clean install.. painful as that is.. and you will not be able to recover .. you can migrate your personal files.. but it would be best to reinstall the applications..
Sorry I had a drop out on my internet.. adsl and it is raining.. so it all goes to pot.
Double post and I cannot fix the top one.

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.

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my info back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos.I see the photos in my HD. What should I do

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my files back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumbnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos. I see the original photo files in my HD. Is there a way to link the Iphoto thumbnails back to the original files?

Use the Firewire cable and t boot the old Mac's hard drive to the new Mac's desktop and transfer your entire iPhoto folder.
Use Disk Utiliy to erase'format HFS+ Journaled your TimeMachine drive and use the free Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your new boot drive to the external, it's hold option bootable.

I cannot able able to start my macbook and then i started my mac in a recovery mode now mac os X utility window opens with 4 options 1. Restore From Time Machine Backup 2. Reinstall Mac OSX 3. Get Help Online 4. Disk Utility if i try to restore my mac wit

i cannot able able to start my macbook and then i started my mac in a recovery mode now mac os X utility window opens with 4 options 1. Restore From Time Machine Backup 2. Reinstall Mac OSX 3. Get Help Online 4. Disk Utility if i try to restore my mac with time machine no option appears if i reinstall from Mac OSX error comes and cannot able to recover from disk utility please help how can i reinstall mac OSX

Guitar21,
your MacBook Pro has booted into its Recovery mode. From the OS X Utilities menu, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Does it get to the login screen now?

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 Backups of Pages file cannot be opened by Pages

I just restird a backup of a Pages file from my Time Machine backup volume. It's not a Pages file! Finder jusy says it's a document and if I double click it, a folder is created with the same name as the file with a number appended. There are sevarla files in the folder - none of them can be opened by Pages.
I'm aware of the Preference to save a backup copy but that saves just one copy, not a tru backup.
Is there some way round this? I'm not inclined to use a product if I can't back up it's files safely.
Pete

It's what I assumed.
An iWork document created with the format introduced by iWork '09 is in fact a folder packed with a specific tool.
If we remove the name extension, the system can't guess that it's an iWork document.
According to the structure of the file, it recognize it as an archive and it unpack it.
It's a variant of what I do when I want to study the contents of the index.xml file describing a document.
In my scheme, I rename wxyz.pages as wxyz.pages.zip
When I unpack it, I get a document wxyz.pages which is a Pages document in the old structure.
When Time Machine give you a document entitled wxyz, it's important to add the extension name by yourself.
If you forget and expand the beast as a folder, nothing is lost. Just rename the folder waxy as waxy.pages and Pages will open it.
From my point of view, the fact that Time Machine return a document without its name extension is a bug in Time Machine.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 2 mai 2011 22:30:54
Please :
Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community
To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

Time Machine backup of open sparsebundle

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