recovering files from corrupt sparsebundle

[macguru9999]

I was wondering if anyone has had luck recovering files from corrupt sparsebundle (actually a backupbundle but the same thing) on an apple time capsule. This person has lost their photos from a faulty fusion drive imac running big sur that has been backing up to a time capsule and the computer has been repaired by apple so the data is gone, and the sparsebundle can be copied to another disk but will not mount as a volume, and its 500gb in size comprising data encoded in "bands" of about 200mb each. Naturally a normal time machine restore also fails with "no volumes" ... but the data is there .... they really had the worst possible setup.

 

[Fishrrman]

Have you tried Apple's own forums?

If the person has a repaired Mac, and is within range of a brick-n-mortar Apple store, and if that store is open (not closed due to covid), he might try taking the Mac and the backup drive there, to see if they could offer assistance.

This is why I would NEVER EVER trust either time machine or "backup over NAS", etc.

I know this doesn't solve your problem, but it might be time to introduce that person to either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper for backups -- and to NOT USE a timecapsule or NAS.
Just use a USB3 external drive instead.

 

[svanstrom]

I was wondering if anyone has had luck recovering files from corrupt sparsebundle (actually a backupbundle but the same thing) on an apple time capsule. This person has lost their photos from a faulty fusion drive imac running big sur that has been backing up to a time capsule and the computer has been repaired by apple so the data is gone, and the sparsebundle can be copied to another disk but will not mount as a volume, and its 500gb in size comprising data encoded in "bands" of about 200mb each. Naturally a normal time machine restore also fails with "no volumes" ... but the data is there .... they really had the worst possible setup.

You've check permissions, have tried to use Disk Utility and Migration Assistant etc?

 

[macguru9999]

Thanks for the replies, this person did not consult me before their drama. NEVER use time machine over NAS for backups, NEVER use any Apple Time Capsule and always have a CLONE as well as using TM for your incremental backups. I have found a unix command line solution to force mount the volume and enable the use of Diskwarrior to create a temporary directory... I will post the result in a while ...

PS No Apple Store would have a staff member able to solve this kind of problem, only a specialist data recovery service with unix skills.

 

[svanstrom]

Thanks for the replies, this person did not consult me before their drama. NEVER use time machine over NAS for backups, NEVER use any Apple Time Capsule and always have a CLONE as well as using TM for your incremental backups. I have found a unix command line solution to force mount the volume and enable the use of Diskwarrior to create a temporary directory... I will post the result in a while ...

sparsebundlefs?

 

[macguru9999]

hdiutil attach -nomount (filename).sparsebundle -shadow /tmp/test.shadow

then run diskwarrior or data rescue