How to get rid of a Volume that magically appears as a shadow of my Time Machine drive

[halloleo]

I'm using an iMac with macOS Catalina. I have attached a Thunderbolt drive with the name mytime. This drives works perfectly for the time machine backup.

One weird issue though is: In the Volume directory I have two volumes with the name mytime when I list the /Volumes directory in the terminal:

$ ls -l /Volumes/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  4 root wheel 128 Aug  6 04:59  Recovery
drwxr-xr-x  3 root wheel  96 Dec 18 10:34  com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root wheel   1 Dec 17 08:27  mainhd -> /
drwxrwxr-x 11 toki staff 352 Jun 28 18:44  myphotos
d--x--x--x  3 root wheel  96 Nov 23 18:36  mytime
drwxrwxr-x 11 root wheel 442 Dec 17 09:43 'mytime 1'
drwxrwxr-x  8 root admin 256 Jul 26  2021  secondhd

So there are two volumes mytime and mytime 1 (with a space). Then when I eject the TM drive it looks like this:

$ ll /Volumes/
total 0
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root   1 Dec 17 08:27 mainhd -> /
drwxrwxr-x 11 toki 352 Jun 28 18:44 myphotos
d--x--x--x  3 root  96 Nov 23 18:36 mytime
drwxrwxr-x  8 root 256 Jul 26  2021 secondhd

So mytime 1 was the real external hard-drive and the strange mytime volume is still there. It has unusual permissions and when I ls into this volume it looks like a Time Machine volume (with Backups.backupdb folder etc), but inside this folder is nothing.

Now I try to eject the "shadow volume" mytime:

$ diskutil eject  /Volumes/mytime

but I get "Unable to find disk for /Volumes/sonapini" despite the fact that ls lists the volume!

Finally I restart - and the shadow volume is again there.

What can I do to tell the system to get rid of this volumetime

 

[Brian33]

I have this same issue on one of my machines, a late 2015 MacBook Pro running Monterey. In my case, the extra mount points in /Volumes have gotten up to number 13 (like "mytime 13"), IIRC.

I'm sure this is a bug, though I haven't heard anyone else complain of it. Interestingly, I have a 2015 iMac running the same version of Monterey, and it does not exhibit this problem.

It's annoying, but it seems pretty harmless. Sometimes I have turned off TM and used Terminal (use 'rm', but be careful!) to remove the extra mount points and rebooted. That clears them for awhile but they do come back.

 

[halloleo]

I have this same issue on one of my machines, a late 2015 MacBook Pro running Monterey. In my case, the extra mount points in /Volumes have gotten up to number 13 (like "mytime 13"), IIRC.

Pretty terrible! Sorry to hear. -- But consoling to me that others seem to have the same problem.

It's annoying, but it seems pretty harmless. Sometimes I have turned off TM and used Terminal to remove the extra mount points and rebooted.

How do you remove the exrtra mount points? For me

diskutil eject "/Volumes/mytime 13"

always says "Unable to find disk".

 

[Brian33]

How do you remove the exrtra mount points? For me

I think they were mount points for previous backup disk images where the backup got interrupted, but currently there's nothing mounted on them -- that's why you get the "unable to find disk" message. You can use 'sudo ls -l' command to look inside them. Mine contain <backup-name>.inprogress/<source-disk-name> directories but no files.

I'd only remove the TM mount point directories that 'ls -l' shows with permissions 'd--x--x--x'. I'd leave the currently-used one with permissions 'drwxrwxr-x' (although I think I've deleted that one too, without harm, while TM was turned OFF). The currently used one is usually (but not always) the highest-numbered one.

First, I would temporarily turn TM automatic backups off.

Then use the command
sudo rm -R "/Volumes/mytime"

(You need the quotes if any of the directory names contain spaces.)

BE CAREFUL! Using 'sudo' with 'rm -R' like this can remove any directory anywhere (and all of its contents)! Be sure to specify the directory to be removed correctly BEFORE you press enter!

Remember to turn TM automatic backups back on again, if that's what you want.

Again, the extra mount points in /Volumes don't seem to cause a problem with Time Machine backups or anything else. I usually wait until I get a dozen or so before I remove them, and even then it's just for a "neater look." I think I get a lot of them because TM on my MacBook Pro is set up to wirelessly make a network backup to my MacMini, and for some reason the network connection often gets interrupted.

 

[halloleo]

I'd only remove the TM mount point directories that 'ls -l' shows with permissions 'd--x--x--x'. [...] BE CAREFUL! Using 'sudo' with 'rm -R' like this can remove any directory anywhere (and all of its contents)! [...] Remember to turn TM automatic backups back on again, if that's what you want.

Thank you so much for this write up, @Brian33 ! I really appreciate it.

I have tried your method and just delete the mount point directories. It works brilliantly. Thanks again.

 

[gilby101]

Thanks again

Hint for newbie: Also, give @Brian33's post a Like.

 

[guido.coza]

similar problem just my volume is called backup. has nearly the same size than the actual volume. can eject it but next reboot back again. it is empty but takes up space????

 

[Brian33]

similar problem just my volume is called backup. has nearly the same size than the actual volume. can eject it but next reboot back again. it is empty but takes up space????

Hmmm. I can't tell from your description if you're seeing the exact same situation, or something different. I'd leave it alone -- if it's really empty it's not taking up any significant space.

In any case, I do NOT recommend using the 'sudo rm....' Terminal command on anything unless you completely understand what it is (and have a good backup)!

 

[guido.coza]

Hmmm. I can't tell from your description if you're seeing the exact same situation, or something different. I'd leave it alone -- if it's really empty it's not taking up any significant space.

In any case, I do NOT recommend using the 'sudo rm....' Terminal command on anything unless you completely understand what it is (and have a good backup)!

Hey Brian. Thats the thing. it is NOT empty. It has nearly the same size than the operating volume, however it looks like it is not used for anything as I can eject it at startup and the machine runs fine for days! I am down to 17gb and should have 60!!!