# How can I extract my files from sparsebundle



## rajan (Feb 17, 2010)

Hello guys,

I was playing with file permissions and now unable to boot my macbook. I tried disk utility option and also archieve and install option from installation disc but failed. Now I have 70GB user.sparsebundle file in my home directory. I am assuming that all my data is in this file but don't know how to extract it.
Please let me know if you have any idea about this.

Thanks in advance.

Rajan


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## djackmac (Feb 17, 2010)

Sounds like you have filevault turned on. If you can't get the machine to boot, then you can't get in to turn filevault off to let you migrate the data. But if you have another Mac to connect to through firewire and the drive will mount to where you can see it on the other machine, you should be able to go to your user folder and if you have the password, mount the sparse bundle and copy your data across to another HD.


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## rajan (Feb 17, 2010)

Actually I copied  user.sparsebundle to an external hardrive..but not able to mount it somewhere else. Is there anything that can just extract files from user.sparsebundle?? 
I dont have another mac but can i install mac os X on external drive and boot it from there ? Am i able to see my files then?? 

Thanks for the help.

rajan


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## djackmac (Feb 17, 2010)

You could but you really should mount the image on another machine to make sure its all there before wiping the drive where the original resides.


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## rajan (Feb 17, 2010)

I tried to copy sparsebundle file on other machine just now but could not mount it. hdutil says "not recognized". Is there other way to mount this file??


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## djackmac (Feb 17, 2010)

rajan said:


> I tried to copy sparsebundle file on other machine just now but could not mount it. hdutil says "not recognized". Is there other way to mount this file??



What machine was this, a Mac? What do you mean by hdutil?


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## rajan (Feb 17, 2010)

I found hdid and hdutil command to attach(mount) images. My user.sparsebundle is from 10.5.8 macbook and i tried to mount it on snow leopard on imac.


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Feb 17, 2010)

Why not just double-click the sparseimage to mount it directly with the Finder?


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## rajan (Feb 17, 2010)

hehe....its sparsebundle file not sparseimage  if i right click it shows me bands of 8mb files...nw yelling at apple....y they kept filevault active by default...


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Feb 17, 2010)

Ah, my mistake.

FileVault is not active by default on any installation of Mac OS X.  It has to be specifically turned on by the user.

This thread has (at minimum) three different methods that seemed to work for others:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6028077


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## rajan (Feb 19, 2010)

Hellooz..
Finally i got an answer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was so stupid...I knew that my files are not corrupted and i was looking for data recovery because my laptop was not booting up and file vault was on.
So here is the answer---->
1. I took an external hard drive...formated it using diskutility and used GUID option as my mac is intel based. 
2. I installed a fresh copy of Mac OS X on external drive and it asked me to Transfer information from old mac. 
3. As I had connected external HD to my mac it juz transfered information from mac to external hard drive.

I am happy that I got all my files but still curious that if my file vault was on then how did it allow to transfer files without any password??

Thanks to all of you for keeping me alive.
hope this simple trick will help to needy ones.


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## djackmac (Feb 19, 2010)

rajan said:


> Hellooz..
> Finally i got an answer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> I was so stupid...I knew that my files are not corrupted and i was looking for data recovery because my laptop was not booting up and file vault was on.
> So here is the answer---->
> ...



You better double check that because migration assistant insists on turning filevault off whenever I've tried transferring with any filevaulted users on a machine. If you don't turn it off it will transfer everything outside that filevaulted user folder so I'm very skeptical that your problem is solved.


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## rajan (Feb 20, 2010)

djackmac,

Surprisingly it didnt asked me for any password or anything to turn off the filevault before transferring the data...Migration assistant asked me what settings to transfer and it included my sparsebundle, network settings and folders...After transfer it asked me my normal login password and i could able to get in. Now here is the interesting part...even if i allowed to login in my account my home folder has a lock icon on it n it was saying that you do not hv permissions. I then turned off the file vault....here it asked me password for filevault. and after 2 hrs ....i could see everything as before. I started using mac 3 yrs ago and it never failed to boot up!!!!!!! (I used to manage  to crash windows OS ever other months  )
I was totally unaware of file vault and sparsebundle till date...neways i learnt my lesson.
Thanks for ur help.


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## g/re/p (Feb 20, 2010)

Yep - like I always say: "Trusting your data to file vault is like letting hungry cannibals babysit your children"


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