Alias failure for WD My Book Firewire Backup Drive

Thanks a lot! You saved my day.

I had the same problem with my external "WD My Book" drive. I used Path Finder (I believe there must be a terminal command to do this as well) to uncheck the "Alias" bit on the drive and now I can access it with Finder again.

Alexander.

The Path Finder download uncheck alias worked for me as well. After a Snow Leopard upgrade to three Macs and using numerous external drives only one -- a Maxtor One Touch -- had this problem. Thanks to all for posting this fix.

After extensive searching, with always a dead end result, I have resorted to your method. And it worked great, thank you!

But this raises some obvious questions:-

1. Did Jason at Apple tell you to use this non-Apple software to fix this problem?
2. Did Jason say why there isn't an Apple software fix for this?

There are many other questions but if I ask them here I know I will just get deleted for causing trouble.....

Sure there's a »fix« with Apple software. You'll need to install the Developer Tools (Xcode) from the Snow Leopard Install DVD, though.

After you've done that, you can use "SetFile" to clear the Alias bit from the misbehaving Volume:

/usr/bin/SetFile -a a /Volumes/<YourExternalDriveName>

Please keep in mind that using this command might be dangerous, so don't try this solution unless you feel confident on the command line. (See http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/m an1/SetFile.1.html or invoke /usr/bin/SetFile without arguments for more info on the SetFile command.)

Alexander.

THANKS Sarance !!!!! I had the same problem after upgrading to SNOW LEOPARD, could not access my external WD STUDIO 2TB hard disk with Finder (only with PathFinder) and after removing the ALIAS BIT from the WD2TB drive, now it CAN BE ACCESSED FROM FINDER !!!

THOUSAND THANKS !!!!!!!!!!

narya wrote:
Sure there's a »fix« with Apple software. You'll need to install the Developer Tools (Xcode) from the Snow Leopard Install DVD, though.

After you've done that, you can use "SetFile" to clear the Alias bit from the misbehaving Volume:

/usr/bin/SetFile -a a /Volumes/<YourExternalDriveName>

Please keep in mind that using this command might be dangerous, so don't try this solution unless you feel confident on the command line. (See http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/m an1/SetFile.1.html or invoke /usr/bin/SetFile without arguments for more info on the SetFile command.)

Alexander.

Thank you for that information.

At long last a solution that doesn't involve the purchase of some other companies software to make my own computer do what it's supposed to anyway.

Can I ask though, how you came upon this »fix«? As it seems that you are the only person in whole of this Apple Discussions forum to have suggested it. For nearly two weeks of personally searching the only solution I found was to *+_'buy some more software to fix it'_+*.

And yet the Apple fix you linked to in your response was posted 9 months ago. How does that happen? If someone could tell me i'd love to hear.

At long last a solution that doesn't involve the purchase of some other companies software to make my own computer do what it's supposed to anyway.

As this seems to be happening only with WD external drives, I'm not so sure which company is to blame here ...

Can I ask though, how you came upon this »fix«? As it seems that you are the only person in whole of this Apple Discussions forum to have suggested it. For nearly two weeks of personally searching the only solution I found was to *+_'buy some more software to fix it'_+*.

I just happened to know that this »alias bit« is part of Apples extended attributes and furthermore that »SetFile« is the designated command to change those attributes. With that in mind is was an easy search for the SetFile man page to figure out the exact syntax to clear the alias bit.

And yet the Apple fix you linked to in your response was posted 9 months ago. How does that happen? If someone could tell me i'd love to hear.

The page I linked to is not a »fix« for the problem discussed here. It's merely the general man page for SetFile. This man pages seems to have been last updated nine month ago. The SetFile command itself certainly has been part of the developer tools much longer.

I hope I was able to clear up your questions.

Alexander.

YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!!!

Same problems with various drives. The Alias Bit check worked for me.

Any way to do this WITHOUT Pathfinder?

(I have come to the conclusion in life... never buy a WD drive. They have ALWAYS failed me on a Mac)

Yep... same problem... same fix... ALL HAIL PATH FINDER THE SAVIOR OF MY MAC PRO

Where is this Path Finder? Had I known this would happen I would have waited to install 10.6. I have the same problem. I can mount my Airport shared disk which I use only for Time Machine but, now I can't open it because it's telling me it's an alias and to find the original.

Thanks Sarance. Found & downloaded Path Finder. Fixed the "alias" issue on my Time Machine Airport drive.

I had almost the identical problem. Saw your post and unchecked the alias bit--problem solved. Thanks.

Sarance, you rule. And Path Finder you rule as well.

I wondered what the 'Alias' bit is, and why it was on the top level mount point.

Found this article which might lead to a command line way of disabling the Alias bit.

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=27642

Thanks narya, that command is exactly what I was looking for!

I had this problem with an external drive hooked up to a Airport Extreme Base Station. I ran this command:
/usr/bin/SetFile -a a /Volumes/Airdisk/

The icon on the desktop blinked, and all was well 🙂

Note: you can re-enable or simulate the problem by running this command:
/usr/bin/SetFile -a A /Volumes/Airdisk/