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I have a USB Drive named "Cuthbert", and various apps use paths starting with /Volumes/Cuthbert when it is plugged in. However, my laptop is putting it at /Volumes/Cuthbert 1, and won't let me rename it, even though there /Volumes/Cuthbert leads to nothing. (It shows up when I ls, but does not show up in the Finder, and there is nothing there.)

What is going on? How can I fix and prevent this frustrating situation?

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    Eject the drive then manually go and remove /Volumes/Cuthbert then re-insert the drive. Is the problem fixed? – Allan Aug 22 '18 at 17:43
  • Yes, that fixed the presenting problem—thank you! How do I fix the underlying problem so I can prevent this from ever happening again? – iconoclast Aug 22 '18 at 17:58
  • It's not really a problem per se. It's when the first mount doesn't get properly unmounted, the directory stays. Then when you plug in the drive it "thinks" it's already mounted and appends the -1. You don't want to change this behavior because it's your safety net if you plug in two drives with the exact same name. – Allan Aug 22 '18 at 18:17
  • I guess if we're narrowly referring to the renaming behavior then you're right: it's necessary. But if we're talking about the whole set of behaviors here, then I absolutely want the behavior to change. First, I want it to properly unmount. Secondly, I need to know when it maps to a different name, because apps that are depending on it being where it's supposed to be are immediately broken, and I get no notification of this. My "automatic" backups of my iPhone with iMazing don't happen, and I'm not alerted to that. – iconoclast Aug 22 '18 at 18:33
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    @iconoclast I'd guess that one of the apps that use the path /Volumes/Cuthbert is creating that folder when it doesn't exist (i.e. when the drive isn't mounted / has just vanished), thus creating the problem. Try running sudo fs_usage | grep "mkdir .*/Volumes/Cuthbert" in a spare Terminal window, and leave it running until the problem reappears. Then check its output to get some idea what the culprit is. – Gordon Davisson Aug 22 '18 at 22:27
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Make sure you properly unmount the USB drive when you remove it. If a volume name already exists in a system and you try to add a volume with the same name it will append -n to the volume name.

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