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Nik Hisham
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Help.  Accidentally deleted filevault sparsebundle image..

Hi all,

I did an incredibly stupid thing today. I went an deleted (dragged to the trash, but did not empty it) the filevault sparse bundle image in my user directory and went and shutdown my Macbook. After a reboot, I could not log in.

Is there a way to recover from this situation?

If you want to know how I got myself in this mess, I was trying to make space on my macbook and found a 44GB file. I didn't know what it was and just tried to drag it to the trash to see if anything bad would happen. After moving to trash, things seemed ok, so I shutdown the machine for a while. So that's how it happened. Now I'm kicking myself.

Thanks for any help.
Nik.

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.6), filevault enabled

Posted on Apr 13, 2009 4:50 AM

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Nik Hisham

Q: Help.  Accidentally deleted filevault sparsebundle image..

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  • by V.K.,

    V.K. V.K. Apr 13, 2009 7:18 AM in response to Nik Hisham
    Level 9 (56,110 points)
    Apr 13, 2009 7:18 AM in response to Nik Hisham
    I don't understand how you were able to do this. were you logged in into that filevault account? or were you logged in as a different user?

  • by Nik Hisham,

    Nik Hisham Nik Hisham Apr 13, 2009 8:12 AM in response to V.K.
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 13, 2009 8:12 AM in response to V.K.
    Hi VK,

    I was logged into the filevault account. I was using a program called Disk Inventory X to locate what files were taking up so much space on my disk. I was running out of space and I knew that I didn't have many apps or much data. Disk Inventory X found a file /Users/Nik/.NikSparsebundle which took up 44GB. All I did was to right click, reveal in finder, then drag and drop it into the trash. Of course I logged out after that.

  • by V.K.,

    V.K. V.K. Apr 13, 2009 8:22 AM in response to Nik Hisham
    Level 9 (56,110 points)
    Apr 13, 2009 8:22 AM in response to Nik Hisham
    I'm not sure where this file is located now. activate root,
    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1278
    log in as root, use inventory x again to find the sparse bundle file and move it back to /users/Nik. the sparse bundle might be in a hidden .Trash folder somewhere but I assume Disk inventory x cans search those.

  • by Nik Hisham,

    Nik Hisham Nik Hisham Apr 13, 2009 8:55 AM in response to V.K.
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 13, 2009 8:55 AM in response to V.K.
    Hi VK,

    Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I logged in as Root, opened a Terminal window and found the sparsebundle image sitting in /.Trashes. I just did a mv to move it back to my user directory. I was able to immediately log back on using my user id.

    It was a good thing I didn't empty the trash after moving the image there.

    Nik.

  • by V.K.,

    V.K. V.K. Apr 13, 2009 12:10 PM in response to Nik Hisham
    Level 9 (56,110 points)
    Apr 13, 2009 12:10 PM in response to Nik Hisham
    Nik Hisham wrote:
    Hi VK,

    Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I logged in as Root, opened a Terminal window and found the sparsebundle image sitting in /.Trashes. I just did a mv to move it back to my user directory. I was able to immediately log back on using my user id.

    glad you've fixed it.

    It was a good thing I didn't empty the trash after moving the image there.

    actually you would not have been able to empty trash because the disk image was in use at the moment.

    Nik.