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Mount Point Problem (Time Machine and External Drive)

Hi,

My TM backups failed awhile ago (Read Only access) and I spent some time repairing the drive so that the sparsebundle could be used/accessed. The drive could not be repaired using Disk Utility but I eventually managed to get the backup to mount and used Disk Warrior to fix it.

Backing up wirelessly to my drive via the Airport Extreme Base Station kind of works now - there is only one problem; I now have two mount points for the drive (Drivename and Drivename-1).

If I reboot my machine and try to enter Time Machine then I only get to see the backup information for Today and Now. If I don't enter Time Machine and let a back up take place it seems to work but again I only see Today and Now when I enter Time Machine afterwards.

However, if I exit Time Machine, and try again, my full time machine backup is available and subsequent backups work as expected.

On the other hand, if I mount the drive manually in the Finder before entering Time Machine (or allowing a backup to take place) then everything works smoothly first time (including subsequent backups).

This is a bit of a pain as I need to remember to manually mount the drive so that I can be sure that Time Machine will work properly.

I'm sure this problem is related to the duplicate mount points but have been unable to delete the redundant one. Similarly, I'm not sure which mount point is redundant! If I mount the drive manually and go to "/Volumes" both aliases are here - if I unmount the drive then "Drivename-1" remains.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.4), 4Gb RAM, 120Gb HD

Posted on Aug 23, 2008 4:28 AM

Reply
7 replies

Aug 23, 2008 8:07 AM in response to Mac SG

Hi,

Thanks for responding so quickly.

I've tried a number of methods to remove this redundant mount point but to no avail.
These have included using the rm command in the terminal.

Are there any particular methods you are thinking of (or can suggest) to delete this "Drivename-1"?
I simply get a message about insufficient privileges.

Any further advice is gratefully received.

Thanks

Sep 14, 2008 9:12 AM in response to V.K.

I am having a similar problem. I went on a vacation. Upon return and after some updates to my Macbook on the road Time Machine is evidently unable to mount the backup drive (which is an Airdisk on an AEBS) according to the logs so mounts it again as Data Disk-1. This is causing Time Machine to go haywire among other things. I have tried to rm the Volume but the problem is that my Time Machine remounts it every time because it doesn't have the necessary permissions to mount the drive in the first place. Anybody out there know how to modify Time Machine permissions so that it will be able to do what it is supposed to do? I have attempted to Repair Permissions multiple times using the Disk Utility and that hasn't worked.

PS - fairly sure that the problem with Time Machine is that, because of the duplicate mount point, it sees my 2TB network drive as a volume that needs to be Time Machined as well and...well, you can hopefully see the slight problem with attempting to back up a 2TB volume via Time Machine to that same 2TB volume.

Sep 14, 2008 2:41 PM in response to LondonRod

LondonRod,

Try this,

First, unmount/eject from the desktop the external hard disk with the Time Machine backups on it.
Now, with the Finder as the foremost application, hold down Cmnd-Shift-G.
In the popup window enter “/Volumes” (without the quotes) and hit return. This will open the Volumes folder which is normally hidden.
Do you see any folders bearing the name of your Time Machine hard disk? (The name might also contain “-1” at the end)
If so, delete them.
Now try backing up again.

Let us know if this had any effect.

Sep 14, 2008 4:53 PM in response to Glenn Carter

Glenn Carter, if you had read Mac SG's first post you would have seen that Mac SG indeed knew very well how to get to the /Volumes directory.

Mac SG, I have exactly the same problem as you have. Did you solve it yet?

Just as you describe, my Time Machine creates a new alias in /Volumes, called <backup volume>-1. Interestingly, doing a Show Original in Finder (cmd R) reveals that it does not at all point to the backup volume but to the enclosing directory, which corresponds to the computer.

I wonder if we are having permissions errors. Of course, there is no way to do Repair Permissions for an AirDisk. Get Info shows that the backup volume has Read&Write access for the user "unknown" and that user "everyone" has No Access. This cannot be changed in Finder.

Oh, also, the alias called <backup volume>-1 cannot be deleted, not even using sudo rm since the directory is "in use".

Any more thoughts?

Sep 14, 2008 8:25 PM in response to Peter Berglund

Sorry Peter, but the instructions were for LondonRod who did not indicate he had attempted this yet. Additionally I am referring to 'stray' mount points. Ones that remain even when the original drive is ejected. They appear as folders not drives. Their presence can confuse processes looking for the original drives.

Hope that is clear. Thanks

Mount Point Problem (Time Machine and External Drive)

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