10.5: Fix Time Machine sparse images with Disk Utility

More Mac Sites:
Macworld
MacUser
iPhone Central

Pick of the Week - Nov 10 [Show all picks]
Path Finder 5 - A feature-laden Finder replacement

12,000 hints and counting!

Thu, Jun 5 2008 at 7:30AM PDT • Contributed by: las_vegas

I don't know how long this capability has been available since I didn't need it until today. Disk Utility in OS X 10.5.3 can now repair a networked Sparse image bundle without mounting it.

Locate the sparse image bundle on the networked drive; the image file will be named ComputerName_MAC-address.sparsebundle. Drag the sparsebundle file into the left column of Disk Utility. Now,select it and click Repair Disk on the First Aid tab. Depending on the size of the file, this could take a few hours to repair. This is, however, much nicer than having to remember the command line procedure!

•

Currently 0.00 / 5
1
2
3
4
5

(0 votes cast)

[10,176 views]

Hint Options

10.5: Fix Time Machine sparse images with Disk Utility | 3 comments | Create New Account

Click here to return to the '10.5: Fix Time Machine sparse images with Disk Utility' hint

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.

10.5: Fix Time Machine sparse images with Disk Utility
Authored by: manly on Thu, Jun 5 2008 at 8:50AM PDT

This worked in at least 10.5.2. However, I've very rarely been able to repair images. In my case, the first corruption was caused by my laptop hanging while running a backup, and the second was caused by issues with my file server. It's too bad I can't take a snapshot of my TM image at a given state without wasting a lot of disk space :(.

10.5: Fix Time Machine sparse images with Disk Utility
Authored by: carmst on Thu, Jun 5 2008 at 10:46AM PDT

Didn't work for me in 10.5.2! My time machine image corrupted a few times running 10.5.2, usually due to the mac going to sleep during the backup, and it required fsck_hfs with the -r switch (catalog btree rebuild) to repair successfully each time. Disk Utility always failed to repair the image. I assume that's the change in 10.5.3, Disk Utility now runs fsck_hfs with -r.

My sparse bundle hasn't corrupted either since the update 10.5.3, so maybe that's fixed too!

10.5: Fix Time Machine sparse images with Disk Utility
Authored by: eliotw on Fri, Nov 14 2008 at 9:19PM PST

I discovered that if the spare image file has an apostrophe in its name you can't drop it onto Disk Utility (10.5.5). I removed that single quote from the filename and the hint worked as expected, but disk utility was still unable to repair the image.

Search

From our Sponsor...

User Functions

Don't have an account yet? Sign up as a New User
Lost your password?

What's New:

Hints

No new hints

Comments last 2 days

Links last 2 weeks

No recent new links

What's New in the Forums?

The Editor's Corner...

Here are some of my (robg) other projects...

•	The Robservatory My blog - Macs, tech, etc.
•	Mac OS X Power Hound The best of Hints in print
•	Inside iWork An iWork training DVD
•	Macworld Column, features, online...

Hints by Topic

News from Macworld

The macosxhints Poll

What version of OS X are you running as your main OS?

Other polls | 11,544 votes | 42 comments

Visit other IDG sites: