Skip to main content
Contact Support

Who is this article for?

CrashPlan Cloud
CrashPlan for Small Business
CrashPlan On-Premises

Find your product plan in the Code42 console on the Account menu.
Not a CrashPlan On-Premises customer? Search or browse Incydr and Instructor, CrashPlan Cloud, or CrashPlan for Small Business.

Instructor, no.

Incydr Professional, Enterprise, Gov F2, and Horizon, no.

Incydr Basic, Advanced, and Gov F1, no.

CrashPlan Cloud, no.

Retired product plans, no.

CrashPlan for Small Business, no.

HOME
GETTING STARTED
RELEASE NOTES
FAQs
APIs
SYSTEM STATUS
Code42 Support

External drive stops backing up on OS X

  1. Last updated
  2. Save as PDF

Who is this article for?

CrashPlan Cloud
CrashPlan for Small Business
CrashPlan On-Premises

Find your product plan in the Code42 console on the Account menu.
Not a CrashPlan On-Premises customer? Search or browse Incydr and Instructor, CrashPlan Cloud, or CrashPlan for Small Business.

Instructor, no.

Incydr Professional, Enterprise, Gov F2, and Horizon, no.

Incydr Basic, Advanced, and Gov F1, no.

CrashPlan Cloud, no.

Retired product plans, no.

CrashPlan for Small Business, no.

Overview

If an external drive that is backing up or serving as a backup destination stops working, you may experience one or more of the following symptoms:

  • CrashPlan may report that the backup is 100% complete, even though the external drive isn't backing up
  • The external drive's name is appended with a "1" (e.g., USB Disk renamed USB Disk 1)
  • The external drive is duplicated in your backup file selection
  • If the drive is used as a backup destination, CrashPlan reports "Backup location is not accessible"

Affects

Code42 app on Mac OS X backing up an external drive, or backing up to an external drive

Diagnosing

This issue is typically caused by a drive that didn't cleanly unmount (e.g., due to a power outage, disconnected without ejecting, etc.). When this happens, the drive can leave behind a "ghost" folder in /Volumes, even though the drive is no longer mounted. When the drive re-mounts, your Mac sees that the folder name for the drive is taken, so it appends a “1” to the drive name. However, CrashPlan is looking for the folder with the original name, which is no longer valid.

To determine if you have a duplicate drive:

  1. Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal
  2. Enter the command: cd /Volumes/
  3. Press Enter
  4. Enter the command: ls
  5. Press Enter

Do you see the external drive name? Do you see one ending with a “1”? If so, this duplicate drive is causing the issue.

Recommended solution

  1. Stop the Code42 service
  2. Make sure your volume is disconnected
  3. In the Finder, go to /Volumes
  4. Delete the drive that is appended with 1
  5. Reconnect your volume (it should appear in /Volumes/ without the 1 ending)
    You can check this using Terminal or the Finder
  6. Start the Code42 service