How can I get the mount path of a USB device on OSX?

Question

I have a backup script that backs up some data to a USB device. The problem I have is that OSX sometimes changes the expected mount path. For example if some file is locked under the expected mount path, OSX mounts it on another path. A USB device named 'BACKUP' can be mounted at /Volumes/BACKUP-1 instead of /Volumes/BACKUP.

Is there a way to finding out the current mount path of a USB device in the OSX Terminal? Something like 'mount_path BACKUP' (command is fake) which would then return '/Volumes/BACKUP-1' or nothing if the device was not mounted?

Daniel Beck · Answer 1 · 2012-05-26T11:38:30.210

The following commands show you information about mounted volumes:

The well-known Unix mount, showing e.g. /dev/disk5s3 mounted at /Volumes/Foo
diskutil list shows an overview of all disks and volumes
diskutil info /dev/disk5s3 shows information about that volume, including a Volume UUID that can be used to uniquely identify that volume.

You can query diskutil info by using the volume's UUID:

$ diskutil info DEC8759E-F77D-3EAE-B3EB-B6438F1AA428 | grep 'Mount Point'
   Mount Point:              /Volumes/DroboOne

Sample command output on my system:

$ mount
/dev/disk1 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
localhost:/bNqIvVr1ZdFBdf19Io81Q4 on /Volumes/MobileBackups (mtmfs, nosuid, read-only, nobrowse)
/dev/disk4 on /Volumes/MyBook (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled)
/dev/disk5s3 on /Volumes/DroboOne (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)
/dev/disk7s3 on /Volumes/DroboTwo (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)
/dev/disk6s3 on /Volumes/DroboThree (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         240.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Servus10 HD            *239.7 GB   disk1
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         3.0 TB     disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS MyBook                 *3.0 TB     disk4
/dev/disk5
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *2.2 TB     disk5
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk5s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS DroboOne                2.2 TB     disk5s3
/dev/disk6
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *2.2 TB     disk6
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk6s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS DroboThree              2.2 TB     disk6s3
/dev/disk7
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *2.2 TB     disk7
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk7s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS DroboTwo                2.2 TB     disk7s3

$ diskutil info /dev/disk5s3
   Device Identifier:        disk5s3
   Device Node:              /dev/disk5s3
   Part of Whole:            disk5
   Device / Media Name:      Untitled

   Volume Name:              DroboOne
   Escaped with Unicode:     DroboOne

   Mounted:                  Yes
   Mount Point:              /Volumes/DroboOne
   Escaped with Unicode:     /Volumes/DroboOne

   File System Personality:  Journaled HFS+
   Type (Bundle):            hfs
   Name (User Visible):      Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
   Journal:                  Journal size 172032 KB at offset 0x4001000
   Owners:                   Disabled

   Partition Type:           Apple_HFS
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 FireWire
   SMART Status:             Not Supported
   Volume UUID:              DEC8759E-F77D-3EAE-B3EB-B6438F1AA428

   Total Size:               2.2 TB (2198888927232 Bytes) (exactly 4294704936 512-Byte-Blocks)
   Volume Free Space:        169.4 GB (169412173824 Bytes) (exactly 330883152 512-Byte-Blocks)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         No
   Ejectable:                Yes

   Whole:                    No
   Internal:                 No

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 26 '12 at 20:53

What about this command:

df -lH | grep "Filesystem"; df -lH | grep "/Volumes/*"

In the column "Mounted on" you get all the Mount Points of all devices mounted on "/Volumes", which in my case are almost always USB devices ;-)

The grep commands basically skip the hard drive which is mounted on "/".

In the terminal of my OSX Snow Leopard, I use it for quick overview of the Mount Points of my currently connected USB Devices. If you are only interested in Mount Points and not all the other parameters as UUID etc., this would be in my opinion the more straight forward way rather than "diskutil" with all its information.

Stephane · Answer 3 · 2017-05-03T09:06:20.117

2

I retrieve it in a variable:

media=\`df | grep "media" | awk '{print $6}'\`

or

media=$(df | awk '/media/ {print $6}')

The df command lists the partitions, the resulting output is piped as input to the grep command which filters and keeps only the lines containing the word media, which is then piped to the awk command which only keeps the 6th column of its one line input.

edited May 03 '17 at 09:06

answered Dec 29 '15 at 11:14

Stephane

205

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 11 '19 at 12:18

1

Just the good old diskutil. This isn't Linux, where you can probably peek into /sys or something.

diskutil info "$VolumeName" | grep "Mount Point" | tr " " "\n" | tail -1

answered May 11 '19 at 12:18

Haotian Yang

199
1
1

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 26 '12 at 09:25

I ended up using this bash script :

#!/bin/sh
#
# Retrieves the mount point of an OSX volume name or UUID.
# @param $1 Name of the volume or UUID of the volume.
# @return returns the mount path or an empty string if the volume is not mounted. 
#
diskutil info $1 | grep 'Mount Point' | cut -d : -f 2 | sed 's/^ *//g' | sed 's/ *$//g';

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

0

I would just use fstab for this. There's a thread regarding this topic here on Super User: Mac Lion: fstab is deprecated. so what replaces it to prevent a partition from mounting?

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

Community

1

answered May 26 '12 at 12:33

dag729

1,964

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 25 '15 at 15:53

0

This is what I use in my shell scripts on OS X

df | awk '{print $6}' | grep -Ex "/Volumes/myvolume"

answered Feb 25 '15 at 15:53

DannyRe

1,651

score -1 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 27 '17 at 14:30

-1

This might work better:

df -lH | grep -E "*putinyourvolumelabel*$" | awk '{print $1}''

edited Apr 27 '17 at 14:30

Stephen Rauch

3,296

answered Apr 27 '17 at 13:40

Dennis Eisen

1

How can I get the mount path of a USB device on OSX?

8 Answers8