Time Machine External Drive Volume Renaming Itself

[Aragornii]

I have an external HDD plugged into my iMac that I use for Time Machine backups. It has one volume for my iMac backup, and one for my MacBook backup. The volume for my MacBook backup is called "Laptop Backup".

The problem I am having is that it renames itself to "Laptop Backup 1" every few days, and Time Machine stops backing up since it can't find the backup disk.

1. is there a way to stop it from doing that?
2. if not, is there an easier way to reset the name without rebooting my iMac?

Some additional context:

a. the renamed "Laptop Backup 1" is only when viewed from my MacBook. From Finder (or Disk Utility) on my iMac it still shows the correct name "Laptop Backup".
b. the other volume, named "Backup", has an issue where it occasionally unmounts itself and I need to manually mount it in Disk Utility. I'm not sure if there two issues are related.

 

[svenmany]

A disconnect/reconnect (one you might not notice) could be causing the rename. If the laptop, after an unintended disconnect, somehow kept hold of the volume name, then the reconnect would have to derive a new name. I've seen such behavior myself, in the past. I guess the volume name has to be unique on a single machine. So, maybe only the MacBook is holding on to an old name and preventing mounting under the "Laptop Backup" name, but the iMac doesn't have that problem.

Any chance you have the disk on the laptop connected using a dock? I've heard of lots of unintended disconnect related issues with Mac laptops. If you were to scour the logs, you would probably see evidence of a disconnect (and maybe some USB related error).

 

[Aragornii]

A disconnect/reconnect (one you might not notice) could be causing the rename. If the laptop, after an unintended disconnect, somehow kept hold of the volume name, then the reconnect would have to derive a new name. I've seen such behavior myself, in the past. I guess the volume name has to be unique on a single machine. So, maybe only the MacBook is holding on to an old name and preventing mounting under the "Laptop Backup" name, but the iMac doesn't have that problem.

Any chance you have the disk on the laptop connected using a dock? I've heard of lots of unintended disconnect related issues with Mac laptops. If you were to scour the logs, you would probably see evidence of a disconnect (and maybe some USB related error).

I think you're onto something. The unmounting and renaming issue are probably related.

It's not connected by a dock, but it is connected by a USB-A to -C adapter. It's also a relatively old drive, purchased in 2017.

 

[Aragornii]

Any thoughts on how I can reset the volume name when this happens? the only way I've discovered is to reboot the iMac, which is a bit of a pain

 

[Apple_Robert]

Try a different drive adapter or get a dock. Usually external disconnects happen when the connection is faulty.

 

[svenmany]

Any thoughts on how I can reset the volume name when this happens? the only way I've discovered is to reboot the iMac, which is a bit of a pain

I don't know. Perhaps the OS thinks the drive is still mounted, at some level. You might not see the drive in DiskUtility (check there anyway), but the volume might be visible when using the "mount" command in the terminal. If so, then the "unmount" command might clean it up.

More specifically, the "mount" command might show:

/dev/diskxxx on /Volumes/Laptop Backup ...

which would imply that the mount point at "Laptop Backup" is in use.

I do know that I've seen my TimeMachine backup to /dev/disk11s2,6 and sometimes to /dev/disk11s2,x. (I forget what "x" was). I don't understand the difference, but TheTimeMachineMechanic reports them as two different destinations, even though they are the same volume. Perhaps you would see such different representations of the device name, one for "Laptop Backup" and one for "Laptop Backup 1", in the output of the "mount" command.

This is a complete guess - 10% confidence level.