Opening Time Machine backup (.sparsebundle) from network attached storage NAS

[Rabattkarte]

Hi,

after I saw your discussion here, my hopes where high!

My situation is that I did frequent backups from my MacBook to a Synology NAS. On that NAS, I have a share dedicated to Time Machine. This backup is encrypted.

I can access that share on Windows and see all the files. The path in question is \\nas\time-machine\my_machine.sparsebundle. The NAS file system is a healthy ext4.

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Now, when I'm trying to access this sparsebundle via HFSExplorer, I go as follows:

1. Click File -> Load file system from path
2. Enter the path \\nas\time-machine\my_machine.sparsebundle -> Click OK
3. It loads for a few seconds then asks me to enter the encryption passphrase.
4. I enter the passphrase.
5. I can select either "EFI System Partiiton" (PARTITION_TYPE_EFI_SYSTEM) or "disk image" (PARTITION_TYPE_APPLE_APFS) as the GUID Partition Table partition.
6. Selecting either throws the following error (Can't find handler for partition type "UNKNOWN"):

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Is there any chance for me to mount that backup from my NAS? As a workaround, I have to buy an external drive, copy the NAS directory over, connect it to my Windows PC via USB and access the files that way maybe.

Thank you very much!

[unsound]

Hi, HFSExplorer cannot read APFS volumes, only HFS+/HFSX so that's the main problem that you're facing here. As the backup is APFS formatted it cannot be accessed with this tool.

[Rabattkarte]

Duh, stupid me. I see, this answers everything, of course. Thank you very much.