sparsebundle is already in use

Thanks! While I hope I don't need to try your suggestion, I'm sure I will sooner or later! 😉

Worked for me. Thanks.

Rebooting worked for me! And it was easy. Thanks.

I'm running Mountain Lion, and this problem seemed to cause my system to be unstable (it would hang when I tried to attach a file, use Finder, or switch to another account), and all of the suggestions above failed. In the end I used Airport Utility to erease my Time Capsule disk, and then I created a new backup. all has been fine since.

Just wanted to add that this worked for me. Mac froze during backup (Lion) and then got the error. This fixed it.

For me, turning off TC didn't work, but rebooting it did! Thanks!

There are multiple solutions to the problem but this is certainly the easiest!! Problem solved immediately!

Thank you!

Glad it helped! 🙂

This worked for me!

Thank you Kethyr! Simple and easy to do. You got the Apple style 😀

Great news! Thanks! 🙂

Thanks! This worked for me!

I've an easy solution. If I get the message "sparsebundle already in use," I figure it's being used by some app. Using Force Quit (Menu Bar, Apple, Force Quit...), I choose the Finder and click on RELAUNCH. Ba-da-bing. Sparsebundle no longer in use.

Ba-da-bing.

No, it did not work.

abombaci's posting helped me.

I'm sure there are many factors when troubleshooting these sorts of things because there could always be issues layered on top of one another.

I received this error with the following scenario:

- Mac mini ethernet connected to my Time Capsule on OS 10.8.3.

I first tried rebooting both the Mac Mini and the Time Capsule (each individually and then both at the same time). Neither option worked for me.

Following abombaci's recommendation, I did notice that my Time Capsule was listed under "SHARED" items in Finder. Although it did not show as a mounted hard drive (that would allow me to Eject it), upon selecting the Time Capsule, I noticed that it was still "Connected".

I then chose to "Disconnect" the Time Capsule and then re-attempted to start a Back Up on Time Machine. This seemed to do the trick for me.

Basically, my Mac Mini seemed to think that the Time Capsule was already connected to my system and had taken up a particular IP address so that when it attempted to reconnect again, it got a wee bit confused. Not a techie explanation but one that seemed to make sense to me.