What do you do if you have, say, an encrypted sparsebundle and some day you try to open it and you discover it shows up as a plain folder in the Finder instead as a bundle icon?

Double clicking will just open the folder and show you the bands that make up the bundle.

So I don't know how you fix the issue in the Finder but I know how you mount the sparsebundle and access the files: just open a Terminal window and type this:

hdid "/path/to/bundle/name_of_bundle.sparsebundle/"

Then you'll have your virtual drive mounted on teh desktop, and if need be you can just copy them to a new sparsebundle.


Comments from long ago:

Comment from: Andy Goundry

Ace post! I’d forgotten how to do that and this reminded me. Worked a treat!

Thanks!

2009-07-16 22-13

Comment from: pdelges

setFile -a B /path/to/bundle/name_of_bundle.sparsebundle/

will set the bundle bit. The sparsebundle should then appear as a disk image.

setFile in part of the developer’s kit… but I think there are ways to install it witout installing the whole dev stuff.

2009-08-26 13-25

Comment from: Ed

The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Apple’s iMac.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1).

I had this message on my time machine. What does this means and how do I resolve it? Can anyone help me, please?

2013-03-29 05-39

Comment from: zeroID

Nice, but I would like to know how to open an encrypted sparsbundle in iOS 13? Is there some app, I cannot find absolutely nothing.

2020-05-29 10-52