Fix Time Machine Sparsebundle NAS Based Backup Errors

Time Machine

This is a modification of an original post for use when you have a corrupt sparsebundle backup on a NAS (as opposed to an external drive attached to a router) and it needs to be repaired. The NAS is likely a hardware product from the likes of Netgear, Synology, Buffalo or QNap – or for those of us with a home-grown backup server running FreeNAS.

The error you may see is “Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.” This can be fixed by following the below.

From your Mac, connect to the network share that houses the sparsebundle.

At the top level of the drive are the various sparsebundles that make up your individual computer backups.

Do not double click on these sparsebundles or try to repair with Disk Utility.

Open Terminal and then switch to root by typing

sudo su -

and then enter your password.

The verication that has already run has marked your sparsebundle as bad, so first we need to make it look normal.

From the command line

chflags -R nouchg /Volumes/{name of your network share}/{name of}.sparsebundle

This may take a little while.

Now type

hdiutil attach -nomount -noverify -noautofsck /Volumes/{name of your network share/{name of}.sparsebundle

You will then see something like

/dev/diskx Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/diskxs1 Apple_partition_map
/dev/diskxs2 Apple_HFSX

Where x is the disk id for the external disk. You are interested in the one labeled Apple_HFSX or Apple_HFS. It might be 2, 3, 4 or higher.

At this point, I have found that the filesystem check is already happening. You can check for activity by tail’ing the fsck_hfs.log

tail -f /var/log/fsck_hfs.log

If fsck is going then in my experience it will be able to repair the sparsebundle. Go away for a few hours and let it chug away.

When it is done, you will either see

‘The Volume was repaired successfully’

or

‘The Volume could not be repaired’

If the latter you can run disk repair again:

fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2

(Optionally if you have the available RAM, you can set a RAM cache in the command above to help speed up this command like so:

fsck_hfs -drfy -c 750 /dev/diskxs2

This will use 750MB of RAM – feel free to change this amount to best fit your system (amount of RAM vs size of your Time Machine Sparsebundle). If you are unsure about this, use the first command.

Make sure to replace x with whatever number your disk is from the output above.

The letters “drfy” tell the filecheck utility different things. d for ‘Show Debug’ – r for ‘Rebuild Catalog Tree’ – f for ‘Force’ and y for assume ‘yes’ to any prompts.

Now go do something for an hour or two. Come back and

tail -f /var/log/fsck_hfs.log

If all went well, the last output you will see is

‘The Volume was repaired successfully’

Now you need to type
hdiutil detach /dev/diskxs2

You can redo the above for any other Time Machine sparse bundles you have permission to modify while you have the network share attached to your computer.

Final step.

When complete, you need to edit an plist file within the sparsebundle that records the state of the backup. On the top level of the sparsebundle find a file called com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist. Edit it and remove these two nodes

<key>RecoveryBackupDeclinedDate</key>
<date>{whatever-the-date}</date>

Finally you want to change

<key>VerificationState</key>
<integer>2</integer>

to
<key>VerificationState</key>
<integer>0</integer>

Now you can eject the network share and have Time Machine give it another go. After the (long) verification step, backups should proceed once again.

Notes:

Ideally this should be done over a gigabit wired network connection. Do not attempt using Wi-Fi. You also want to make sure your machine does not go to sleep during the above operation.

[Update: 1.1.2013]

I appreciate all the warm feedback from people all over the world who have been helped by this post. This site helps to fund my hobbies, so if this post has helped you please consider a USD $1.99 donation to my hobby fund.

[Update: 12.23.2012]

If after running the initial

fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2

command you get a message in the fsck_hfs.log along the lines of

RebuildBTree – record x in node y is not recoverable.

then try

fsck_hfs -p /dev/diskxs2

followed by

fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2

And see if that works.  It did for me today.

207 thoughts on “Fix Time Machine Sparsebundle NAS Based Backup Errors

  1. Francis Crossman

    Thank you so much for taking the time to put this together, it has saved my time machine backups many times.

    I am finding though, that I have to go through this whole process every couple of days. Do you have any idea why this would be?

    I’m running a new 15″ MBP Retina backing up to a Sygnology diskstation 411 (latest firmware) over Wireless N.

    Reply
  2. Robert Fenton

    Hi Garth,

    When I run it stops here:

    /dev/rdisk2s2: fsck_hfs run at Mon Mar 18 19:02:09 2013
    /dev/rdisk2s2: ** /dev/rdisk2s2
    /dev/rdisk2s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557~393).
    ** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
    ** Detected a case-sensitive volume.
    The volume name is Time Machine Backups
    ** Checking extents overflow file.
    ** Checking catalog file.
    ** Checking multi-linked files.
    ** Checking catalog hierarchy.
    ** Checking extended attributes file.
    Incorrect number of extended attributes
    (It should be 1680148 instead of 1680147)
    Incorrect number of Access Control Lists
    (It should be 1680124 instead of 1680123)
    ** Checking multi-linked directories.
    ** Checking volume bitmap.
    ** Checking volume information.
    ** Repairing volume.
    GetCatalogRecord: No matching catalog thread record found
    /dev/rdisk2s2: GetCatalogRecord: No matching catalog thread record found
    /dev/rdisk2s2: GetCatalogRecord: No matching catalog thread record found
    /dev/rdisk2s2: GetCatalogRecord: No matching catalog thread record found

    Do I need to do something else?

    Reply
  3. Joris

    Hi Garth,

    the solution seems promising. However (being a newby to the command line), it seems the command does not recognize my sparebundle name as there are spaces in the name. How to solve this?

    name of the sparsebundle ==> MacBook van Joris_2013-03-07-102410.sparsebundle

    You reply is much appreciated!

    Joris

    Reply
  4. SteveH

    I suspect this means the worst, but here is what I get:

    sh-3.2# fsck_hfs -drfy -c 750 “/dev/disk4s2″
    ** /dev/rdisk4s2 (NO WRITE)
    Using cacheBlockSize=32K cacheTotalBlock=128 cacheSize=4096K.
    Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-491.6~3).
    ** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
    ** Detected a case-sensitive volume.
    BTIterateRecord(945): returning fsBTInvalidNodeErr
    Catalog file entry not found for extent
    (4, 0)
    ** The volume could not be verified completely.
    volume check failed with error 7
    volume type is pure HFS+
    primary MDB is at block 0 0×00
    alternate MDB is at block 0 0×00
    primary VHB is at block 2 0×02
    alternate VHB is at block 683984310 0x28c4c5b6
    sector size = 512 0×200
    VolumeObject flags = 0×07
    total sectors for volume = 683984312 0x28c4c5b8
    total sectors for embedded volume = 0 0×00
    sh-3.2#

    A little background: my MBP’s disk died (under warranty); I restored the system using Migration Assistant (yes, I now know I should have used Setup Assistant); after fixing some permissions, I got .Trash, Spotlight, and time machine to work. That was yesterday: TIme Machine churned away putting — it said — 80 Gb back into the back up that I used to rebuild the system. (The sparsebundle got about 30 Gb bigger, actually.) This morning I used time machine in Star Wars mode to look at the backup. All were there. An hour later, I went to retrieve a file again using the Star Wars interface, but it just sat there. Even rebooting the machine did not help and then I noticed that backups were getting dreaded error 6584. Some poking around and — well the above the current state.

    It seem so near ant yet so far…… I’d hate to loose about a year’s backup.

    Reply
  5. Michael

    Garth, thanks for the info. I’m having trouble with the “hdiutil attach…” step – I only get one disk: /dev/disk1.

    I tried repairing that, but still get “No mountable volumes” error when I try to open the sparsebundle.

    Any suggestions?
    Thanks again,
    Michael

    Reply
      1. Michael

        Thanks again Garth,

        I ended up taking the drive to a recovery service, and unfortunately, there was too much physical damage (scratched platter) to read the info.

        Lesson for the day: get a backup system with redundancy!

        -Michael

        Reply
  6. Joe

    Garth,

    Thanks for your help with this. I think I am on my way to fixing my sparsebundle, but the fsck command has been running for 48 hours now. I am using a Synology NAS. Here is the output from the tail -f command:

    JoeMacPro:~ root# hdiutil attach -nomount -noverify -noautofsck /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Renee\ MacBook.sparsebundle
    /dev/disk13 GUID_partition_scheme
    /dev/disk13s1 EFI
    /dev/disk13s2 Apple_HFS
    JoeMacPro:~ root# tail -f /var/log/fsck_hfs.log

    /dev/rdisk12s2: fsck_hfs run at Sun Feb 24 15:38:54 2013
    /dev/rdisk12s2: ** /dev/rdisk12s2 (NO WRITE)
    /dev/rdisk12s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3~1).
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

    /dev/rdisk13s2: fsck_hfs run at Tue Feb 26 18:04:51 2013
    /dev/rdisk13s2: ** /dev/rdisk13s2 (NO WRITE)
    /dev/rdisk13s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3~1).
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY

    /dev/rdisk14s2: fsck_hfs run at Wed Feb 27 08:08:45 2013
    /dev/rdisk14s2: ** /dev/rdisk14s2 (NO WRITE)
    /dev/rdisk14s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3~1).
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

    /dev/rdisk14s2: fsck_hfs run at Wed Feb 27 08:08:56 2013
    /dev/rdisk14s2: ** /dev/rdisk14s2 (NO WRITE)
    /dev/rdisk14s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3~1).
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

    /dev/rdisk15s2: fsck_hfs run at Thu Feb 28 03:04:41 2013
    /dev/rdisk15s2: ** /dev/rdisk15s2 (NO WRITE)
    /dev/rdisk15s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3~1).
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

    /dev/rdisk15s2: fsck_hfs run at Thu Feb 28 03:04:52 2013
    /dev/rdisk15s2: ** /dev/rdisk15s2 (NO WRITE)
    /dev/rdisk15s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3~1).
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

    Thanks in advance for any help you can provide,

    Joe

    Reply
  7. Nicolas

    Thanks so much for this post! I was about to write off netatalk and go back to plugging my external drive in with USB when I found this.

    Reply
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  9. Andreas

    Sadly, this doesn’t work for me.
    I tried your latest addition because I got the “RebuildBTree – record 29 in node 112 is not recoverable” error.
    But after running “fsck_hfs -p /dev/diskxs2″ and “fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2″ again it just shows the same problem.
    Any other chance to get this fixed?

    Reply
    1. Jorge Sá Pereira

      @Andreas I was having the same problem, after a successful ‘fsck_hfs -p /dev/diskxs2′ the ‘fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2′ as failing again.

      I’ve disconnected the TimeMachine drive and connected again.
      I’ve started the same process again:

      # chflags -R nouchg /Volumes//.sparsebundle
      # hdiutil attach -nomount -noverify -noautofsck /Volumes//.sparsebundle
      # fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2

      And this time every this went well, and I didn’t run the ‘fsck_hfs -p /dev/diskxs2′ again.

      My TimeMachine is now backing up.
      Thank you for this tutorial.

      Reply
    2. Danny

      I had a similar error showing up as well, but I followed Jorge’s advice of first disconnecting the Time Machine drive, then reconnecting and running those three commands again. My original error never showed up again during the third step like before, and yada yada yada, my Time Machine sparsebundle is error-free and currently backing up my system as I type. Many thanks to both Garth and Jorge!

      Reply
  10. todivefor

    I am having the same problem as f. pedersen. I do have UTF-8 encoding.

    Peters-MacBook-Pro:TimeMachineBackup root# ls
    .AppleDesktop Network Trash Folder
    .AppleDouble Peter???s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle
    .DS_Store Temporary Items
    ._.DS_Store
    Peters-MacBook-Pro:TimeMachineBackup root# ls “Peter’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle”
    ls: Peter’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
    Peters-MacBook-Pro:TimeMachineBackup root# ls “Peter???s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle”
    ls: Peter???s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
    Peters-MacBook-Pro:TimeMachineBackup root# ls “Peter’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle”
    ls: Peter’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
    Peters-MacBook-Pro:TimeMachineBackup root# ls “Peter’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle”
    ls: Peter’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
    Peters-MacBook-Pro:TimeMachineBackup root# ls
    .AppleDesktop ._.DS_Store Temporary Items
    .AppleDouble Network Trash Folder
    .DS_Store Peter???s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle
    Peters-MacBook-Pro:TimeMachineBackup root#

    Any ideas before I give up and create a new backup?

    Reply
    1. John Tupper

      I’ve used this web page several times to recover my ReadyNAS-Time Machine backups. Thank you so much for the research and for posting this page.

      Reply
  11. Ian

    After i run “tail -f /var/log/fsck_hfs.log”, the following appears and stay there till now.

    /dev/rdisk2s2: ** /dev/rdisk2s2 (NO WRITE)
    /dev/rdisk2s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557~393).
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

    Is there normal? N roughly how long it will take?

    Thanks.

    Reply
    1. Garth Gillespie

      @Ian – The line ‘QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN’ is the last output in that operation. if you see that you can proceed to the repair (drfy) command.

      Reply
  12. esskay

    Thanks so much for this! My MBP backs up to a Synology 413 NAS. I was out of town this week, and the MBP attempted a TM backup from the hotel. Not sure why it tried, but I cancelled it. Not sure if that was the cause, but once I returned home and the MBP tried to TM backup, I received the dreaded error described in this article.

    I was having problems entering a curly quote in the file path while following these directions. With the help of user “chrfr” on Macrumors, I discovered the problem. This was his advice, which worked perfectly:

    ***************
    That’s happening because you’re changing from the default shell of bash to sh. Type
    ———
    sudo -s
    ———
    instead of
    ———
    sudo su -
    ———
    to stay in bash, and then everything will work as it normally does.
    ***************

    Additionally, I had to unmount and remount the volume with hdiutil using the -readwrite flag to get fsck to work.

    Reply
  13. Andy

    Adrian’s comment above really helped me with the last step, but I think the second line should read:

    defaults write MyFile.sparsebundle/com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist VerificationState 0

    Reply
  14. Maciek Barczak

    Thank you Man, you also saved my backup. Netatalk 2.2.2 running on rtn-66u . In my case error occured just after I changed wifi connection to different network , while the TM backup was running. Thank you one more time.

    Reply
  15. Mike

    After a few hiccups (for some reason “Michael’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle” was actually named “Michael???s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle”) I was able to get this going and it worked PERFECTLY. THANK YOU GARTH! It’s upsetting that this has been going on for so long and Apple hasn’t even acknowledged it. Fortunately we have brilliant and resourceful people like you coming up with solutions in Apple’s absence. Definitely gonna throw a couple bucks your way via the PayPal link above.

    Again, thanks!!
    Mike

    Reply
  16. Mike

    Thanks Garth! I’ve already used your solution here to fix my Time Machine a few times. Today, though, I got the RebuildBTree error that you posted about in your 12.23.2012 update. After running:

    fsck_hfs -p /dev/diskxs2

    It goes through smoothly and I get a “volume was repaired successfully”. In your update you say to do another:

    fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2

    This second fsck_hfs continually returns a:

    ** Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
    CreateNewBTree returned 5
    ** The volume Time Machine Backups could not be repaired.
    volume type is pure HFS+
    primary MDB is at block 0 0×00
    alternate MDB is at block 0 0×00
    primary VHB is at block 2 0×02
    alternate VHB is at block 781565870 0x2e95bfae
    sector size = 512 0×200
    VolumeObject flags = 0×07
    total sectors for volume = 781565872 0x2e95bfb0
    total sectors for embedded volume = 0 0×00
    CheckHFS returned 5, fsmodified = 1

    Any ideas? Thanks so much!

    Reply
  17. Amier

    Worked like a charm.
    specially your comment to wait and use tail.
    This helped me a lot! Thank you very much.

    Reply
  18. Philipp

    I tried everything suggested, even the Update from 12.23.2012, but still get:

    RebuildBTree – record 23 in node 1067 is not recoverable.

    ** The volume Time Machine-Backups could not be repaired.

    Any advice what I can do now (I use a TimeCapsule 2TB)?

    Reply
    1. Philipp

      fsck_hfs always crashes at same point (5 tries now). In Console I get as last message:

      /dev/rdisk1s2: ** Repairing volume.
      Invalid first link in hard link chain (id = 4280704)
      (It should be 4975628 instead of 4834085

      Reply
    1. mike

      This really helped. Like some others my disk passed the fsck_hfs check — the disk was OK. After editing the plist file made the backup useful. I just wish that I found this in September 2012 when I wiped out all my backups going back to 2008. The new time machine sparse bundle worked from Sept until Jan before giving this message.

      Reply
  19. Timo

    Thanks, helped for QNap TS-559 Pro II with a similar issue in OSX 10.6. Although the fsck_hfs.log didn’t say “volume repaired successfully”, but that it appears to be OK. After the final steps the Time Machine worked though.

    Reply
  20. pepito

    I started to follow the instructions, and it has been running the first fsck_hfs for more than 20 hours now! The first chflags and hdiutil seemed to work as expected, but then after tailing fsck_hfs, soon it quickly said:

    /dev/rdisk2s2: fsck_hfs run at Fri Dec 28 18:35:09 2012
    /dev/rdisk2s2: ** /dev/rdisk2s2 (NO WRITE)
    /dev/rdisk2s2: Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-540.1~25).
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY

    and then the prompt keeps blinking in Terminal, with no further answer. Should I still wait ?

    FWIW, I am running 10.7.5 on a MacBook Air, connected over Ethernet to a 1TB Time Capsule, where the offending sparsebundle resides.

    I would appreciate any help.

    Reply
    1. Garth Gillespie

      @pepito (and others)

      If you see “QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY” in the fsck_hfs.log – that means that the volume has mounted and you can proceed with the “fsck_hfs -drfy …” command

      Reply
  21. Cédric

    Marvelous ! You saved my backup :) Now, I must find the reason why this TM is continuously crashing…

    Reply
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  23. RDavidson

    Garth,
    I gotta say that your post saved my backup! I couldn’t believe that I pulled this off after searching for an answer for weeks!
    Thanks!!!
    Score: Garth 1 Apple 0
    Amazingly this is one (very common) problem that after having searched almost the whole http://www…….all the roads led me to this blog!! You Sir…are THE man…!!
    10,00000000000 thanks!

    Cheers

    Ricardo A Davidson
    Vancouver, Canada

    Reply
  24. David McDonald

    Thanks so much for this post! It allowed me to repair my backup on my qnap-nas instead of starting over again like I have done in the past.

    Cheers!

    David.

    Reply
  25. James

    Everything seems to work, except that I don’t get a “Repair complete” message. Instead it rebuilds B-tree, then rechecks volume and then prompts:

    ** Checking extended attributes file.
    Invalid allocation block start
    (8, 110900)
    ** The volume Time Machine Backups could not be verified completely.
    volume check failed with error 7

    What could be the problem? Thanks in advance

    Reply
  26. Chadbag

    Interesting. I got the dreaded failed-verify-create-newbackup. My TM server is an OpenIndiana box with netatalk 2.2.3. However, when I do the above, it actually said the volume was OK and no lines in the fsck log show anything getting fixed. So I updated the plist and things are back to normal. Thanks for the concise instructions!

    Reply
    1. Michael Prindle

      Chad, I had the same thing happen today when I went to repair the backup for my wife’s macbook that’s backing up a Netgear ReadyNAS.

      Reply
  27. Elio

    Garth, great article, hat off.I believe that a comment is in order, as I have an addition which might be helpful.
    On Mountain Lion 10.8.2, I followed your guid up to the point where you suggest the use of fsck_hfs. It kept saying it couldn’t repair the disk. From the tip of another user on internet, i tried diskutil RepairVolume /dev/diskXs2 which worked. I now can see all the directories pointing to the backups I did.

    On the final step…
    I didn’t have the key RecoveryBackupDeclinedDate
    but I don’t bother on it.
    the key VerificationState which you suggest to change from 2 to 0, was instead 1.
    I’ve changed it to 0, but, apparently I’m not able to restart the TimeMachine software on it. Not bad anyway, as long as I have my data back. I’m now restoring manually my data. Will try to finish your procedure afterwards and, eventually, give the updates here.
    Thanks, thanks, again
    Elio

    Reply
  28. Greg

    Excellent! I have been having periodic issues with my Synology Diskstation. In the past, I’ve just wiped out my prior backups and started over (not good). The original fsck ran overnight and was repeating the same thing over and over ending in quick check, file system clean. I cntl-c’d out of that and finished your process. Kicked off a backup and TM ran, completed and did a verification which also completed.

    Thanks for the info!

    Reply
  29. Michael Rommel

    Hi Garth,
    Thank you so much for your excellent and simple solution!
    I just wonder why it happened, and if/when it will happen again…

    Best wishes,
    michael

    Reply
  30. VV

    Thank you for this Garth, it rescued my Time Machine backup on a QNAP NAS and saved me having to start all over again.

    My Mac refused to mount the TM location from the Finder, so I had to do it from the command line, using a command line like this:

    sudo mount_afp afp://TimeMachine:(password)@(IP address)/TMBackup /Volumes/TMBackup

    Replace (password) with the “TimeMachine” user’s password and (address) with the IP address of the device. I also had to create /Volumes/TMBackup manually.

    Reply
  31. Jeff

    Hi Garth,

    Apologies for troubling you.

    I’m having difficulty with a minor issue following your article instructions. My fault, not yours! Possibly I could contact you to clarify the problem please?

    My sparsebundle has one apostrophe and two spaces in it (Jeff’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle)

    Regardless of what I try, eg ‘\’ escape characters, all in “quotes” etc – I cannot manage to get the terminal code executed.

    Naturally its very frustrating, although I fully appreciate its because of my lack of knowledge! If only I could rename it even (eg to Jeff.sparsebundle) that would be ideal.

    I’m using OS X 10.8.2 with a 3rd Gen Time Capsule.

    Thank you in advance, Jeff

    Reply
    1. Garth Gillespie

      @Jeff – you need to quote the entire path for the sparsebundle so

      “/Volumes/path/to/Jeff’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle.”

      When you quote, don’t also escape.

      Reply
  32. SpiderMac

    Hi,

    when I type the line fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/disk1s2, I have the error below.

    Does-it mean that my backup is not fixable?

    Thank you in advance for your reply.

    SpiderMac:~ root# fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/disk1s2
    journal_replay(/dev/disk1s2) returned 0
    ** /dev/rdisk1s2
    Using cacheBlockSize=32K cacheTotalBlock=16384 cacheSize=524288K.
    Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557~393).
    ** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
    ** Detected a case-sensitive volume.
    The volume name is Backup di Time Machine
    ** Checking extents overflow file.
    ** Checking catalog file.
    ** Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
    Extent records for rebuilt file 4:
    [ 262018, 216320 ]
    [ 0, 0 ]
    [ 0, 0 ]
    [ 0, 0 ]
    [ 0, 0 ]
    [ 0, 0 ]
    [ 0, 0 ]
    [ 0, 0 ]
    hfs_UNswap_BTNode: invalid node height (1)
    btree file 4: 1000 records
    btree file 4: 2000 records
    RebuildBTree – InsertBTreeRecord failed with err 5 0×05
    RebuildBTree – numRecords = 2416
    RebuildBTree – record 1 in node 58 is not recoverable.

    xxxxxxxx BTreeKey (length 32) xxxxxxxx
    1E 00 AE 04 00 00 0C 00 4D 00 61 00 69 00 6E 00 ……..M.a.i.n.
    4D 00 65 00 6E 00 75 00 2E 00 6E 00 69 00 62 00 M.e.n.u…n.i.b.

    xxxxxxxx BTreeData (length 248) xxxxxxxx
    02 00 8E 00 00 00 00 00 C0 04 00 00 70 48 10 CB …………pH..
    EC 1B 53 CB 68 18 5F CC 69 18 5F CC 00 00 00 00 ..S.h._.i._…..
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 20 A4 81 01 00 00 00 ……… ……
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 50 38 B1 C9 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ….P8……….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C0 4C 00 00 00 00 00 00 ………L……
    00 00 00 00 05 00 00 00 88 11 12 00 05 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 …………….
    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ……..
    ** The volume Backup di Time Machine could not be repaired.
    volume type is pure HFS+
    primary MDB is at block 0 0×00
    alternate MDB is at block 0 0×00
    primary VHB is at block 2 0×02
    alternate VHB is at block 838860734 0x31ffffbe
    sector size = 512 0×200
    VolumeObject flags = 0×07
    total sectors for volume = 838860736 0x31ffffc0
    total sectors for embedded volume = 0 0×00
    CheckHFS returned 8, fsmodified = 1

    Reply
  33. f. pedersen

    I am trying your kinstructions out but I keep having problems with the name of the sparsebundle (I have tried both the reported name which includes the “???” and the name that Finder reports (including an apostrophe). This is a transcript of the session (the netdrive is a Qnap 456 and I use Mountain Lion). :

    FPMacBook:~ his047$ sudo su -
    Password:
    Sorry, try again.
    Password:
    FPMacBook:~ root# cd TMBackup
    -sh: cd: TMBackup: No such file or directory
    FPMacBook:~ root# cd /Volumes/TMBackup
    FPMacBook:TMBackup root# ls -l
    total 0
    drwxrwxrwx@ 1 root wheel 264 Sep 23 06:11 Frederik???s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle
    drwxrwxrwx@ 1 root wheel 264 Mar 13 2011 Network Trash Folder
    drwxrwxrwx@ 1 root wheel 264 Mar 13 2011 Temporary Items
    drwxrwxrwx@ 1 root wheel 264 Sep 4 22:42 Thomas???s MacBook Air.sparsebundle
    FPMacBook:TMBackup root# chflags -R nouchg “/Volumes/TMBackup/Frederik Pedersen’s MacbookPro.sparsebundle

    Could you help with this?

    Thanks

    Reply
    1. Garth Gillespie

      @f.pedersen – I think your Terminal encoding is set to something other than UTF-8. Goto Terminal->Preferences->Settings and then the Advanced tab of the profile you are using. In the International section, it should be UTF-8.

      Reply
  34. Rich

    I enter the following: chflags -R nouchg “/Volumes/c/.timemachine/Richard Harsell’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle”
    I get the error:
    chflags: /Volumes/c/.timemachine/Richard Harsell’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle: No such file or directory

    My volume name seem different from those above or too complex. When I enter the name of volume as ReadyNAS (how it shows in finder), the same thing happens.

    What am I missing?

    Reply
  35. Daniel Harbach

    Hi Garth, thank you very much !!! This has finally worked. I had already 2x deleted the backup and started again. Neither Synology nor Apple offer a solution. Garth saves the Universe, as Apple Marketing would phrase it.

    1) report on how it worked:
    After the ‘volume repaired’ I did not get the prompt again, so I inserted the eject command too early. Anyway, I logged out and back in again and then did the “sudo su -” command followed by “hdiutil detach /dev/diskxs2″ (after finding out what ‘x’ is).

    And 2) a tip to help less experienced users:
    In order to modify the .plist, you need to right/ctrl-click on the .sparsebundle then select “Show Package Contents” and then you will see the .plist and can edit it. – To edit I used TextEdit through PathFinder.

    Having said this, PathFinder 6 has been very useful in this whole operation because it shows easily where I am and I can use the Terminal in the same window. Made my life easier.

    Thank you so much again! This is great!!!

    Best wishes,

    Daniel :) )

    Reply
  36. Eric

    Dude, you’re a rock star!

    This worked for me, although I was momentarily confused by the following, even after doing fsck_hfs:
    hdiutil: attach failed – no mountable file systems

    The ‘chflags -R nouchg /Volumes/Backup 1/My-Backup.sparsebundle’ mojo was what I needed in the end. I thought I had already done this once before the ‘fsck_hfs’. But doing it again and things got better.

    Thanks!

    Reply
  37. Rik

    Awesome – thank you so much – this really helped me out in a pinch! I wish I had googled and found this site much earlier – before I lost a bunch of backups.. :/

    Reply
  38. Adrian

    If we are already getting dirty with the terminal, why not just edit the plist files directly with “defaults” commands:

    defaults delete MyFile.sparsebundle/com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist RecoveryBackupDeclinedDate

    and

    defaults write MyFile.sparsebundle/com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist RecoveryBackupDeclinedDate VerificationState 0

    Reply

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