Restoring SparseBundle to New Drive

[robwilkerson]

A few days after Xmas, the hard drive on my almost new 17" unibody MBP failed. Catastrophically. The local Apple store has replaced the drive with a shiny new one, but now I need to restore my system rather than rebuilding.

I have a backup from Christmas day, but after lots of Googling and reading the SD user guide, I don't feel like I have a clear picture of how the restore should work. At the very least, the steps I'm trying to follow aren't working.

I have an external HD that currently contains 2 separate SD backups in sparesebundle format. I sort of assumed (yeah, I know what that means) that I'd be able to press <option> when booting and boot to either backup, but a practice run that I just tried indicates that this may not be the case. I read the FAQ, but my machine is an Intel Mac.

I also tried following the instructions for non-bootable devices, but while I can boot into the install disc, Disk Utility won't allow me to open my sparsebundle file in order to restore from it.

Are there other steps I should be taking? Am I just doing something horribly wrong?

Thanks.

[dnanian]

You should be able to mount/open the bundle, Rob, using your Snow Leopard DVD. It won't let you mount it?

[robwilkerson]

Originally Posted by dnanian

You should be able to mount/open the bundle, Rob, using your Snow Leopard DVD. It won't let you mount it?

No. I'm able to see the external HD itself, but when I navigate to it, the two sparsebundle files are greyed out. Here's all of what I'm doing just in case I'm doing something wrong/stupid:

I've booted into my Snow Leopard DVD with my external HD attached. Once the DVD boots, I navigate through a panel or two until the menu bar appears. From the menu bar, I launch Disk Utility. Once DU loads, I go to File > Open, navigate to my external HD and try to click on one of my two sparsebundles. Since they're greyed out, of course, I can't.

Thanks for your help.

[dnanian]

OK. Please try opening Terminal from the Utilities menu, then use

hdiutil attach "/path/to/the/sparse/bundle"

[robwilkerson]

I'll try this as soon as I get home this evening. Thanks, Dave.

[robwilkerson]

Originally Posted by dnanian

OK. Please try opening Terminal from the Utilities menu, then use

hdiutil attach "/path/to/the/sparse/bundle"

It took a while to mount, but I'm sending this from my newly restored HD. I've only been booted for a couple of minutes, but all indications look good. I think SuperDuper saved the day yet again.

Thanks for your help.

[dnanian]

Glad I could do so, Rob!