How to change name of the main hard disk

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Level 1

14 points

How to change name of the main hard disk

I have to do this operation on Macs running Tiger, and Mac running Leopard.
In both case, if you ctrl-click the disk in a Finder window, you have the option Rename "Macintosh HD". Nice. I tried (in Tiger), as admin user, then I switched to another user and boom! A window with a message like "Cannot find Macintosh HD:path..." appeared, and the user Dock configuration was lost.
Which steps do I have to follow to correctly change the name of the main HD?
Something different between 10.4 and 10.5 to take care?

iMac PowerPC G5, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Apr 27, 2008 3:04 PM

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Answer 1

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Apr 27, 2008 4:16 PM in response to Stefano62

Stefano62 wrote:
I have to do this operation on Macs running Tiger, and Mac running Leopard.
In both case, if you ctrl-click the disk in a Finder window, you have the option Rename "Macintosh HD". Nice. I tried (in Tiger), as admin user, then I switched to another user and boom! A window with a message like "Cannot find Macintosh HD:path..." appeared, and the user Dock configuration was lost.
Which steps do I have to follow to correctly change the name of the main HD?
Something different between 10.4 and 10.5 to take care?

I would presume that you need to use the terminal and change the name in the Volumes folder, and then also edit any automount or other files that will be looking for the old name.
You might be able to create an alias for the drive, and give the alias a new name and then hide the original one from the desktop using the Finder preferences. Just a thought, though.

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Answer 2

Apr 27, 2008 4:40 PM in response to Stefano62

First of all, changing the name of the disk is even more simple: just highlight it, either on the Desktop or in the Computer window, and hit return.

Yours may just be a Dock issue. I suggest restarting the computer; some programs may be holding onto the old name.

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