mac volume could not be unmounted using live mode

Navigate your way to the hidden folder containing backups at /Volumes/.timemachine/ and unmount all the snapshots listed in that folder.

(period or full stop) to reveal all hidden items. Then, in the Finder, press Command-Shift. First, select the backup volume and unmount it, and repeat that with any other volumes in the same container. There is a workaround, but you have to be careful or you’ll end up racing against Time Machine, which will be busy trying to stop you from running First Aid. Instead of calling fsck_apfs using its -l option to attempt a live volume check and repair, the action has simply failed. In fact, what has happened is that Disk Utility hasn’t attempted to unmount the backups stored on that volume properly. As it still appears impossible to do that with Time Machine APFS backup volumes, users are tempted to erase their backups and start afresh, in the hope that the problem doesn’t recur. You’ll almost certainly see this error which perversely leads you to believe that repair failed because of problems found on the volume, and recommends that you “back up the data on this volume”. Once Time Machine has completed one of its hourly backup sessions, open Disk Utility, select that backup volume and click First Aid. This is easily demonstrated if you already make Time Machine backups to an APFS volume, and are running macOS 12.4. Yet, over five years after the new file system’s release on 27 March 2017, Disk Utility is still riddled with bugs, and can’t check or repair disks containing Time Machine backups unless the Mac is booted in Recovery Mode, or without resorting to skulduggery with hidden snapshots.

While there are several excellent alternatives which can perform the same tasks on HFS+ volumes, Apple’s policies on APFS have successfully locked all competition out of this market. After all, any file system without sufficient tools to check, repair and maintain it isn’t fit for release, is it?ĭisk Utility and its command line check and repair tool fsck_apfs are thus among the most important utilities in the whole of macOS. In doing so, it made a commitment to its users that Apple itself would provide all the tools necessary to work with its new file system. When Apple developed APFS, it decided neither to make it open source, nor to document it sufficiently to help third parties develop their own utilities for its maintenance.

Mac volume could not be unmounted using live mode