retreive a file from a sparsebundle?

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Level 1

8 points

retreive a file from a sparsebundle?

Greetings,

(sorry if this is wordy, wanted to explain the circumstances)

I have a 2013 iMac for my business. It runs 2 VMware instances, Win10 and Win8(which is my old XP, files I need for drafting, etc). The fusion drive started to fail in the iMac a few weeks ago. I wasn't worried, have Time Capsule backup on NAS and also uploaded to BackBlaze. Needless to say, the time capsule backed up some damaged files, one being the image for the Win8 VMware and the other my quickbooks company file. I took the iMac to apple store, confirmed the bad hard drive, 3 weeks to replace, had to buy another iMac, restored the backup from the NAS, discovered the Win8 trashed and the company file issue. Took a snapshot of the Time Capsule backup on BackBlaze. Took nearly 2 weeks to get the copy. Finally have it and cannot access the aes-imac.sparsebundle, image not recognized. I've searching the web for an answer, haven't found one that works.

The windows8 2.vmwarevm file is irreplaceable and if anyone can help me get it back, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Dave

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Sep 19, 2017 12:46 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 19, 2017 2:17 PM in response to Islandman54

Fixing a sparsebundle is very difficult. Since Time Machine is now well known for corrupting its own backup, people have been trying to access the original sparse bundle to recover files for as long as I have been posting here.. and mostly with little success.. Everything depends on what exactly has gone wrong.

I have seen a few posts where people have managed something.. I stored this one for future reference as having some hope.

Fix corrupt TM backup.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7258280?answerId=29263757022#29263757022

1) Disable Time Machine.

2) Stopping all Spotlight indexes (mdutil -d -a).

3) Destroying all Spotlight indexes (rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100) manually.

4) Repairing a file system permission issue with Spotlight (removed a bunch of folders owned by a non-existant user in a /private/var/folders subfolder that Spotlight created). No idea how they got there but they were there and the logs were complaining about them causing a fatal error.

5) Re-enabling Spotlight indexes and letting them build fully.

6) Re-running an initial Time Machine backup.

I am not convinced that a backup stored in cloud of a Mac Sparsebundle will actually work. An Apple Sparsebundle MUST be stored on HFS+ format. see more below.

Just as a too late, BTW, When you backup a virtual machine you should do so inside the actual OS, so you get the files intact in native format. And save them to a normal NTFS formatted windows disk.

Did Apple hand you back the dead drive? If so perhaps the VM file can be recovered via a disk recovery service.. not probable but better chance of working than anything else I can think of.

Did you ring Apple and get their ideas.. ??

I've searching the web for an answer, haven't found one that works.

TM has a whole bunch of commands that allow a few things that the TM app doesn't.

If you have tried the repair and that has failed then it is very difficult to say.. but my guess of the problem is the backup is not sitting on disk of the right format.. TM cannot read a sparsebundle from anything but a Mac formatted disk.

However I don't think you can do anything as simple as copy the sparse bundle now to correctly formatted disk because the file links are based on HFS+ format.

You would do a lot better working on the original sparsebundle from the synology or see if you can get files from the dead hard disk.

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Answer 2

Islandman54 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 21, 2017 12:30 PM in response to LaPastenague

Greetings and thanks for the input, still banging my head against the wall.

"I am not convinced that a backup stored in cloud of a Mac Sparsebundle will actually work."

I followed the instructions on backblaze site, so I assumed it would work.

"Just as a too late, BTW, When you backup a virtual machine you should do so inside the actual OS, so you get the files intact in native format. And save them to a normal NTFS formatted windows disk."

Yes, a lesson learned. Automator copies them to a seperate NAS and they are uploaded to backblaze daily, now...

"Did Apple hand you back the dead drive?"

Apple wanted nearly $400 for the dead drive, never heard of such a thing. A previous Time Machine restore of this iMac went swimmingly well, so I thought I was good.

"Did you ring Apple and get their ideas.. ??"

I actually had a really good apple contact, his email and phone number from another issue, queried him on this one and

"I’ll be honest, if the disk image (sparse bundle) will not mount, there is very little we can provide in the way of assistance. It means the image is not complete and/or corrupted. There may be third party utilities to extract the contents of the image without actually mounting the file system itself within macOS."

More lesson's learned. Deleted the original backup I had restored this machine with to make room for a new backup now that I had my "backup" iMac running. Didn't fully vet the restore...stupid mistake but it's my business machine and I had to get it going...dumb move.

I've learned a lot from this and have taken steps to do prevent this in the future.

Don't put all your sparsebundles in one bucket. Back up the VMware files individually. Find something other than time machine to do alternate backups. Buy larger raid drives, etc.

Thanks for your input, I appreciate it.

Dave

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Answer 3

Sep 22, 2017 2:42 PM in response to LaPastenague

I did discover a page of useful info..

http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machine-sparsebundle-nas-b ased-backup-errors.html

Fixing Sparsebundle errors on a NAS.. but again the basic situation is the sparsebundle must be able to mount.

Since TM corrupts its own backup regularly now.. this has become important.. but this is different to what you are trying to do.. unless you think you can recover from a running TM backup.

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Answer 4

Sep 21, 2017 2:28 PM in response to Islandman54

Hi Dave

Apple wanted nearly $400 for the dead drive, never heard of such a thing.

Agree.. That drive belongs to you.. Apple cannot sell you back your own drive. Under a warranty repair there maybe questions I suppose.. but if you paid for a straight out repair.. not an exchange.. who ever heard of a hard disk exchange..all the dead parts are yours. My family used to run a repair business and my Dad taught me to hand over all the parts.. it both shows the customer you did the job and they own the parts.. most people just left them for us to throw away and I guess we could recycle them to the next customer.. Even my car mechanic shows me all the parts.. and I can take them with me if I was so inclined.

If you have a decent consumer authority in your state.. I would be make representation.

When you did all the right things.. local and cloud backups it is difficult to then find your backups have failed.

It is one thing about VM I think people forget.. and really running windows on a PC might be a simpler approach.

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Answer 5

Islandman54 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 22, 2017 2:40 AM in response to LaPastenague

Good Morning,

I guess the issue was, they would have to replace the entire fusion drive and that was the cost. I'm not sure I could have salvaged anything off it, will never know now.

Looking into my issue more, the @SynologyCloudSync folder contains a cloudsync_encrypt.info file, which leads me to believe that the backup may be encrypted. I cannot remember and since I've completely re-done all the cloud sync items on my Synology NAS, I can't check. Synology has a decrypt program, in Ubuntu. I am not all that familiar with Ubuntu, but do have a boot disk for my windows laptop. I successfully installed the program from the tar.gz file in my Ubuntu downloads directory but cannot seem to get it to execute so that will be this mornings learning curve.

Here's the link. Have you had any experience with this?

Download Center - DS213 | Synology Inc.

Thanks,

Dave

PS I got so tired of windows, updates crashing things, random issues, I decided to try Apple. It's been working extremely well, given the fact that I really had to learn a lot of new things. I've never had an issue with the VMware.

I did not try the fix corrupt TM backup, as the backup is not mountable. I'd like to try that just to sort out my spotlight search which had hosed my email search capability. I'm fuzzy on the "Repairing a file system permission issue with Spotlight (removed a bunch of folders owned by a non-existant user in a /private/var/folders subfolder that Spotlight created). No idea how they got there but they were there and the logs were complaining about them causing a fatal error." Is that something I have to do manually?

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Answer 6

Sep 22, 2017 1:21 PM in response to Islandman54

Sorry no.. I have no experience beyond what I have given you.

I used to do Ubuntu and Linux command line stuff.. but I am getting too old for it.

Is that something I have to do manually?

Yes.. but you do have to mount the sparsebundle to actually achieve that. The problem I am thinking is that your sparsebundle is not on a HFS+ disk.. and therefore is useless. HFS+ is essential part of how this works.

Tell me the format of the disk the backup is sitting on.. I will have a check what happens to synology backup of TM Sparsebundle.

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Answer 7

Islandman54 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 23, 2017 12:45 AM in response to LaPastenague

The backblaze disk is Mac OS Extended format aka (HFS+). I have a feeling that it will not mount as it's encrypted. Also, it is read only.

No worries on the Ubuntu, I have a friend in MD that will help me tomorrow, if I don't solve it today on my own.

I am currently copying all the files from the Backblaze disk to another 8TB drive. The disk from Backblaze is locked and I have to use Western Digital software to unlock it every time or it won't mount. As this will take ~ 9 hours, gives me time to go buy another disk and try to mount both to Ubuntu and try to decrypt the backups.

I have read that page you provided, found it in my travels looking for solutions. Thanks.

Dave

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