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Level 1

31 points

Macintosh HD icon is not on my Desktop or visible from the Finder

After upgrading to Leopard, the "*Macintosh HD*" icon does not show up on the Desktop or in the Finder. Not even in the Finder under my Machine's name.

The drive exists - since I'm typing this from a workable install of Leopard. But it doesn't show up in the Finder.

Using GetFileInfo (from the Developer Tools folder) I can see that the Visibility flag is set. If I turn that flag off, the drive reappears until I bring up a Finder window and select the drive. Then it is gone and something has reset the "V" extended attribute flag.

Anyone else experiencing this fun?

MacBook Pro C2D, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Nov 2, 2007 4:47 PM

81 replies

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jota73

Level 1

0 points

Dec 8, 2007 10:42 AM in response to PhotographicMemories

This bug has become really annoying.

First it was my internal HD, I managed to fix it with the script posted by francine.

Now it has extended to a partition of one of my external HD (the one in which I have superduper doing my backup)

I tried to fix this with the indications to be done in terminal, but I get an error that says:
chflags: /Volumes/SuperDuper: No such file or directory

When will apple fix this!? It has been a lot since it first appeared this bug and yet nothing.

Dec 8, 2007 5:58 PM in response to Mitch2025

scratch that. problem came back after my mac stayed off all night

Paul Laskin Author

Level 1

31 points

Dec 9, 2007 10:53 AM in response to PhotographicMemories

Nice try, but this didn't work for me. Whatever is setting the 'V' flag to invisible still gets in there and twiddles that bit. While the drive won't disappear as soon as the 'V' flag goes high, it does eventually.

Dec 9, 2007 1:37 PM in response to Paul Laskin

Actually, the problem also came back for me after I shut the machine down overnight like the previous poster. Now one of my drives is hidden, but the other is visible.

I guess theoretically, a script could run on login to force the drives to be visible, but thats a nasty hack.

This is a pretty bad BUG Apple, if users cannot access their drives, they cannot access their data and that's pretty much what people want to do on computers.

Although this thread is not tagged "ANSWERED", until a bug fix comes out, its not fixed at all. And that *****.

Dec 9, 2007 4:00 PM in response to PhotographicMemories

You CAN access your data, you just can't see the drive/partition/whatever in the Finder. As I mentioned before you can make an alias to an invisible item and open whatever it is by double clicking the alias. You can access anything on the drive using Spotlight. All that the new improved chflags command does is provide a third way to change the V bit. I have recently updated my article on invisiblity to include a section devoted to Leopard:

http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/invisible.html

It includes the directions for making an alias, in case you don't want to scroll back thru this now rather long thread to find them.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

Astaic

Level 1

0 points

Dec 11, 2007 8:48 PM in response to Richard Bottiglieri

No, 10.5.1 does not fix this. It actually has happened today after my system crashed from an idisk transfer error. strange.

Jauhari

Level 1

2 points

Dec 14, 2007 1:12 PM in response to First Magus

Work Perfect, but how to make Permanent? that I mean, sometimes if I restart my Leopard this icon invincible again, so I must retype this command again. 😟

How to make this permanent? without type anything that I mean.

Thanks

Dec 17, 2007 10:11 PM in response to Community User

^^^ It'd be annoying to authenticate each time you write to the hard drive, no? But does it work?

So my cousin is having this same problem. She just got my old PowerBook G4 1.25 Ghz which I just installed Leopard onto. It blows because I just extolled to her the greatness that is Apple and this bug is really silly and annoying.

_*When is Apple gonna fix this?*_

I know someone in Apple and I'm going to be writing to him about this issue and other issues I noticed too in Tiger (consistently modified Access times when mounting a drive read-only, very very bad)

Message was edited by: Kiki Splash

Jauhari

Level 1

2 points

Dec 29, 2007 3:56 PM in response to Paul Laskin

Can anyone show me how to make it Permanent? Because My Machintosh HD something disappear again, so I need to type this command again in Terminal.. and this is not good 😟

Please tell me.

Thanks

Steisler

Level 1

10 points

Dec 30, 2007 6:18 PM in response to Richard Bottiglieri

im using 10.5.1 and my HD icon disappeared yesterday. I actually had a hard drive go on my on christmas eve and had to put in a new one, and reinstall leopard. Didnt have any probs the first time i installed leopard and now, my HD icon is gone, and some pictures are grey'd out when i try to upload them on the internet .. small things but nevertheless. I just did Francines alias idea and got my HD icon back. But ya, 10.5.1 didnt fix it

Steisler

Level 1

10 points

Dec 30, 2007 6:48 PM in response to Steisler

One more thing .. suppose 10.5.2 (when it comes out) actually solves this problem. Will the invisible "Macintosh HD" icon re appear along side my alias "Macintosh HD" icon? If so, I guess that's the proof I need that 10.5.2 corrected this problem .. right?

Paul Laskin Author

Level 1

31 points

Dec 31, 2007 9:30 AM in response to Jauhari

As andrews08 posted earlier, the commands are

sudo chflags nohidden /
sudo chmod g-w /

That first command is what resets the "V" flag and is equivalent to 'sudo SetFile -a v /'.

On my machine, this is only a temporary fix. Whatever flips "v" to "V" (and I still believe Spotlight is the culprit) is running with enough permissions to reset the flag to invisible. Setting 'Group' permissions on root doesn't fix the problem permanently.

Jun 12, 2018 5:44 PM in response to Paul Laskin

It doesn't work for you? Strange. What are the permissions on your root? After doing g-w mine looks like this:
Owner: system, Read & Write
Group: admin, Read only
Everyone: Read only

Paul Laskin Author

Level 1

31 points

Jan 1, 2008 7:23 AM in response to Community User

Same permissions as yours and they don't change but after a while that 'v' flag goes high anyway. Then on a logout / login or wake from sleep the root drive is no where in site.

What does the permissions on your root volume look like?
if I am at /Volumes and
ls -ale

I get:
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 Dec 28 14:25 Macintosh HD -> /

Jun 12, 2018 5:44 PM in response to Community User

Yeah, mine's the same. When I'm actually in / rather than /Volumes it looks like this:
drwxr-xr-t@ 37 root admin 1326 28 Dec 16:45 .
drwxr-xr-t@ 37 root admin 1326 28 Dec 16:45 ..

Macintosh HD icon is not on my Desktop or visible from the Finder

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Macintosh HD icon is not on my Desktop or visible from the Finder