Sample Header Ad - 728x90

How can I mount a TimeMachine Backup snapshot in the Terminal via mount_apfs?

2 votes
2 answers
876 views
I backup my Apple Silicon Mac (running macOS Sonoma) to an external, directly attached drive via Time Machine. All backup snapshots on that external drive I can list via $ ls -1 /Volumes/.timemachine// (\ is here a long hexadecimal number identifier.) In this directory are all the snapshots, for example /Volumes/.timemachine//2024-03-14-123547.backup However _inside_ the snapshot folder is no accessible Data directory. So I think I need to _mount_ the snapshot before I can access its data in the Terminal. So I tried
$ mkdir ~/TM_Backup
$ mount_apfs  -s com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-14-123547 / ~/TM_Backup
But I always get the error message "_mount_apfs: volume could not be mounted: Resource busy_" (I get this error with _all snapshots, so there must be something wrong with the command.) How can I mount the TimeMachine Backup snapshot via a Terminal command?
Asked by halloleo (1497 rep)
Apr 15, 2024, 07:35 AM
Last activity: Jul 28, 2024, 03:04 AM