Instead of a single big file, a sparse bundle is a bundle (directory) containing a number of files called bands, each on the order of 8 MB in size. Mac OS X Leopard introduced the concept of the sparse bundle.

sparseimage image files automatically expand to their preassigned limit when data is added, they cannot be arbitrarily resized without the use of Disk Utility, hdiutil, or other such software. sparseimage file must first be moved to a larger physical disk or partition.

While the virtual volume will seem to make that capacity available, attempting to exceed the physical capacity of the underlying volume will result in a disk error: 'ran out of space'.

A customized '.sparseimage' image file can be assigned a larger total capacity than the physical volume (or HD partition) on which it originally resides.

Two limitations are therefore worth noting regarding the use of this image file format: sparseimage) takes up only as much actual disk space as the data contained within, up to a maximum of the capacity assigned during creation. dmg), which takes up as much actual space as the real disk it represents (regardless of the amount of unused space), a sparse image file (. Sparse images can be created using Disk Utility. Encrypted sparse image files are used to secure a user's home directory by the FileVault feature in Mac OS X Snow Leopard and earlier. A sparse image is a type of disk image file used on macOS that grows in size as the user adds data to the image, taking up only as much disk space as stored in it.

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