While experimenting with TimeMachine’s unsupported network backup capabilities I rsync’d my host_blah.sparsebundle from one drive to another (without using -E, more on that later). The result was that my .sparsebundle now appeared in the Finder just as a normal folder, instead of with a disk image icon. This also meant that I couldn’t open the image in DiskUtility any more.

The fix is to use SetFile to restore the “Bundle” attribute.

The first time I mounted it afterwards I had to wait for fsck_hfs to complete, since the “com.apple.diskimages.fsck” attribute had been cleared, but otherwise it’s back to it’s old self.

… more