Hi there,
I am trying to access a Time Macine Back, to restore a potential busted External Hard, and the only thing I can seem to find on the TM is a file for 1.2TB called Sparse Disk Image Bundle.
The size indicates it is what I need, but I cant seem to find anything else that would be the back up.
Can anyone help, what is this file?
Thanks
Richard
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
That is likely the backup. If you use the Time Machine application, does it load?
You have to open the Disk Image in order to see the contents. Double click on it to mount it.
Hi Eric,
Really sorry, please can you pretend you are speaking to a 5 year old 🙂
How do I use the TM Application to load it. The back up is on an external NAS, as it is greyed out in Finder when I access TM?
Thanks
Richard
Hi Glenn
If I double click on it, I get a little box pop up that says
Resource Temporarily Unavailable?
Thanks
Richard
Open up Disk Utility from the Utilities folder located in the Application folder. Find the NAS drive in the sidebar of the DU window. There should be an icon to eject the drive there. Click the eject button to eject the TM backup drive.
Once the NAS drive is ejected from Disk Utility, try double clicking on the sparse image again to mount it.
Unless you are using a Time Capsule for network backup, I just want it to be known that other NAS devices are not recommended for TM backups. It may or may not work. If it does, it may not be reliable.
Hi Glenn
I just want to be sure, is it this I should be ejecting?
Thanks again
Yes, if that's the Time Machine backup drive. I don't see the eject button on the side, however I'm in El Capitan. Click on the Eject button in the window's menu bar.
Once it's ejected, try to remount the image again. Once mounted, it should show in the Finder window. Make sure Finder Preferences are set to show shared drives and devices in the sidebar.
OK, so now I have this error pop up
"The disk “Richard’s iMac.sparsebundle” could not be unmounted.
Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk."
The only thing I have open is a data recovery on another hard drive, a USB one, and Safari to have this conversation
😟
Thanks again
Are you saying your Time Machine backup is on the same drive as your startup? Or is it on the NAS drive? Is anything else (such as other applications) on the computer accessing the NAS drive?
Try ejecting the Time Machine volume under the drive first.
What type of NAS drive is the TM backup on? And how is it formatted?
You might try restarting the computer and see if you can mount the TM backup image.
Hi Glenn, the set up is
Mac desktop
External WD Hard drive formatted as Mac (Journaled) which contained my Aperture photo library.
This External WD Hard Drive was back up to a Buffalo NAS
The External WD Hard drive has died, so I am trying to access the Buffalo NAS to get my Aperture library back.
I restarted Disk Utility and tried to eject Time Machine first, but got the same message. I am about to restart, I will let you know what happens
Thanks, Rich
Well, its restarted, and I now have Time Machine Back ups in the finder window.
However, it appear the oldest back up doesn't have the External Hard Drive on it, for some reason. One of the more recent ones does, but the drive, called WD External, is empty.
Does this mean it wasn't backed up for some reason. I recall getting a pop up saying Back up completed successfully, so am a little confused.
Thanks again
Rich
Once you have mounted the Sparse Image, it will appear as a drive in the device list in the sidebar of the Finder. Select the device in the sidebar. If you can navigate to the Backups.backupdb folder and then to the correct drive, you should be able to see your backup files. Select a date and wait a few minutes. It make take a minute for it to populate the files depending on the speed of the connection. If no files appear, then the backups may not have occurred.
In addition: You should have a spinning wheel at the bottom of the window in the progress bar (if you enabled it to show) while it is accessing files.
I don't really know about the drive you are using for backup. In the past, it was not recommended to use any other NAS other than Time Capsule for NAS. However, things may have changed and some may now be usable. You would have to check on that with your particular drive.
Glenn,
Thank you for taking the time to help.
I am fearing the worst, as the drive in question is empty, so i fear the back ups haven't worked.
I am going to send the corrupted Ext HDD off for recovery, and hope for the best.
Again, thanks so much for your time, it is appreciated.
Rich
Be sure you give it the time to access the files. NAS drive can be slow to retrieve the information. Check through more than one of the backup files for that drive.
In the meantime, you can do some reading at this site. It may not be up to date for the latest OS, but contains great info on TM.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Good Luck
Hi Glenn,
Further to the above, I managed to locate another sparse bundle on my second NAS, but when I try and click on that I get a different message,
"No mountable File systems"
This is 1.8 TB, so I am thinking this is the back up I am looking for.
Can you help with trying to enter this as a time machine folder?
Thanks, as ever.
Rich
Back Up - Sparse Disk Image Bundle on TimeMachine
