unmounting a partition?

S

snazz

Registered
hey guys

does anyone know if there is a way in OS X to unmount a drive from the desktop? i have my hard drive partitioned into two parts and i only want one of them to appear on the desktop... any help would be appreciated

pete
 
thanks!

however i figured the partition would still appear in the column view mode... i guess i asked the wrong question....

is there anyway to have the drive not appear on the desktop but still be accessible?
 
snazz is talking about individual partitions. From what you've typed, snazz, you've got the answer already--drag to the trash. It won't show on the desktop but will still be accessible. AppleScript should do nicely for automating this process. I have a dedicated swap partition on my hard disk that mounts and I generally ignore it, but I would appreciate the option of removing its icon from the desktop but not affecting its actual status with the system. Steve Jobs, are you reading this?
 
chenly, you are wrong! no offense, but i think that if you umount a drive, then you cannot access it at all. if you umount your swap partition, you will be in real trouble.

what you should do is name your swap partition something that starts with a .

then you won t have to see it
 
Whoa! I'm just parroting back what snazz wrote: if you unmount a disk partition by dragging it to the trash, it doesn't show on the desktop but is still available in column view. I haven't tested this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it works. snazz, is this correct? Can you drag a partition to the trash and still access it from column view? What about if it's an invisible volume (i.e., beginning with ".")?
 
i tried dragging the partition to the trash and it disappeared from the desktop but was no longer accessible in column view mode...

putting a . before the name of the drive makes it invisible, but its invisisble in column mode too (unless i show all hidden folders/files... which i don't wanna do).

so i haven't been able to figure out how to get the drive to not appear on the desktop yet
 
snazz: OK, i think i already posted this, but in case you missed it:
to make it disappear from the desktop, go to preferences in Finder. there is an option to make things not appear on the desktop. it will still be available in column view and such.


--drag to the trash. It won't show on the desktop but will still be accessible
Click to expand...
chenly: snazz never said that, only you. when you unmount something, it is not available through any channels at all, until you remount it. this is what happens when you drag a disk into the trash.
 
lethe: i tried that, but since i only want to make one of my partitions not appear, that option in the finder preferences makes all them not appear...
 
well there is one more option you could use, although its not great:

give it a name that starts with a . so that it is invisible. it will disappear from column view as well, but you can still access it. you could at it to your dock, so you would have instant access.

its probably not the solution that you are looking for, but that s it. either finder shows you mounted volumes, or it doesnt. finder doesn t really choose which files or volumes will show up on a one to one basis, and even if it did, i suspect that any way you could change its attributes for the desktop, would also apply to finder windows in column view.

they are both in finder, after all.
 
reviving this old thread - how do you rename a drive so that it starts with a period?

i tried renaming it in /Volumes but nothing changed and i couldn't unmount it until i had changed the name back.

Failing that...

I dont mind (in fact i probably prefer) having the drive unmounted as it is my back up drive - i will mount it once a week to do the backup then unmount till next time.

Im happy doing applescript if anyone knows how to unmount a drive (NOT eject - thats easy) then make a folder action to unmount it if it is mounted...

I have 3 partitions on the disk and i want the other 2 to remain mounted - the eject command will remove all 3.

I know its possible to do as you can do it manually in disk utility
 
Zammy-Sam said:
Why not use an alias link which you can rename?
Click to expand...

What? I dont understand. I have a drive with 3 partitions, i want 2 to show up on the desktop - but the third to remain unmounted
 
I understood that you want to rename the drives and that's why I proposed to make a link to the partition which you can easily label as you want. However, why won't you make hdds not show up in the finder (Finder -> Preferences.. -> Hard Disc <unmarked>) and instead of this, you use an alias file to those two partitions you want to see on your desktop. Would that be a solution?
 
mmm possibly - but not as neat as i would have hoped. I could make a folder action that places an alias on the desktop when the drives are mounted and turn off the show drives on desktop option in finder.

Anyway - its 11pm - time for me to go home! Enough work for one day!
 
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