Time Machine sparsebundle mounting problems
Problem
I have a Time Machine backup which contains a lot of valuable information and I'm trying to access it. What's the problem? I'm trying to mount it and nothing1 happens.
- Nothing happens? So I tried to eject the network disk containing the sparsebundle and I got an error saying:
"The disk backups couldn't be ejected because finder it using it"
What??? My guess is DiskImageMounter is mounting but is ridiculously slow?
Notes / Updates
Note:
installd
is eating up my CPU usage, is this in anyway related to DiskImageMounterNote 2: If I go to "Browse Other Backup Disks" it finds the sparsebundle but none of the backups show.
Update: Seems like
mds
is going crazy on the backup drive. I'll try to disable spotlight and see what I can do
There must surely be a better way to browse a Time Machine backup on a network disk
If not, how can my problem be fixed?
It's not Time Machine, or anything
It's Spotlight. How?
Spotlight
Spotlight indexes everything. Even on an external disk. My backup .sparsebundle was > 2 TB. My computer can't handle this. Spotlight would index everything before it showed in finder.
Debugging
First, to see what was using the disk. Run:
sudo lsof | grep /Volumes/<Volume Name>
I got something like:
diskimage 519 vihan 4r mds
and about 4 of those. That meant Spotlight was going haywire.
Disabling
Disabling spotlight is simple. RUN THIS BEFORE TOUCHING THE .SPARSEBUNDLE
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
That should disable Spotlight. Now you can double click the .sparsebundle and continue as from this answer