diff --git a/daemon/daemon.go b/daemon/daemon.go
index e1c2e50f0f2bc..6a0c4dbd7c622 100644
--- a/daemon/daemon.go
+++ b/daemon/daemon.go
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ package daemon // import "github.com/docker/docker/daemon"
 import (
 	"context"
 	"fmt"
+	"io/fs"
 	"net"
 	"net/url"
 	"os"
@@ -204,11 +205,6 @@ func (daemon *Daemon) RegistryHosts() docker.RegistryHosts {
 }
 
 func (daemon *Daemon) restore(ctx context.Context) error {
-	// Restoring containers after a restart is not yet supported
-	// when using the containerd content store.
-	if daemon.UsesSnapshotter() {
-		return nil
-	}
 	var mapLock sync.Mutex
 	containers := make(map[string]*container.Container)
 
@@ -219,6 +215,12 @@ func (daemon *Daemon) restore(ctx context.Context) error {
 		return err
 	}
 
+	// Restoring containers after a restart is not yet supported
+	// when using the containerd content store.
+	if daemon.UsesSnapshotter() {
+		dir = []fs.DirEntry{}
+	}
+
 	// parallelLimit is the maximum number of parallel startup jobs that we
 	// allow (this is the limited used for all startup semaphores). The multipler
 	// (128) was chosen after some fairly significant benchmarking -- don't change