User profile for user: Taxi Badger
Taxi Badger Author
User level: Level 1
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Hiding partitions

Hi. Not sure this is actually possible but I'm hoping there's a way to hide certain partitions. I've got three internal hard drives, one of which has a small partition for exclusive use as Photoshop's scratch disk. This really doesn't need to be on the desktop and with space being taken up by something that's never going to be clicked. But I don't want to hide the larger partition or the Mac HDD so I can't just uncheck the show hard drives option in Finder preferences. What I'd like to do is something similar to the trick with the drive that Windows lives on and just make it invisible apart from Disk Utility, or maybe the Finder sidebar - yeah, I could live with that. But it's clearly not as simple as renaming it with a '.' on the front. Any suggestions?

Mac Pro and Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.1), Occasional Vista user

Posted on Sep 29, 2009 6:06 AM

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16 replies
User profile for user: V.K.
V.K.
User level: Level 9
56,192 points

Sep 29, 2009 8:10 AM in response to Taxi Badger

run the following terminal command in finder 

sudo chflags hidden /volumes/"partition name"


put the name of the partition in the command. KEEP the quotes.
You'll have to enter you admin password (which you won't see). that's normal. this will hide that partition from finder. you may need to restart after running the command.

P.S. to unhide it change hidden to nohidden in the command.
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User profile for user: Taxi Badger
Taxi Badger Author
User level: Level 1
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Sep 29, 2009 3:10 PM in response to V.K.

Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't think of using aliases, and it seems so obvious in hindsight - d'oh. But I decided to try a different terminal command that I found from googling.

sudo /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/"partition name"

... followed by restarting Finder. I had to rename the partition since it didn't seem to like the space in "Photoshop Scratch" but once it was a single word name and I restarted Finder the partition was gone. Still appears in the sidebar, though greyed out which I thought meant it wasn't mounted. But since I can still write and read to it and Photoshop isn't moaning that the drive it wants to use for it's scratch disk isn't available it looks like it's doing what I want. Still, aliases would have been quicker if than googling for that particular solution. (face-palm)
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User profile for user: V.K.
V.K.
User level: Level 9
56,192 points

Sep 29, 2009 4:38 PM in response to KJK555

KJK555 wrote:
"sudo chflags hidden /volumes/"partition name""

Hi VK:
Doing that will cause an icon called "client node" to appear on the desktop where the drive
icon used to be.

I've never seen any such thing and I've used that command quite often. it hides the partition from finder completely.
I believe the root of the problem is, neither chflags or setfile works properly
on system devices.

Kj ♘
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User profile for user: KJK555
KJK555
User level: Level 4
2,906 points

Sep 29, 2009 5:03 PM in response to V.K.

"I've never seen any such thing and I've used that command quite often. it hides the partition from finder completely."

It's doing it on mine, it shows a drive icon named "client node" that cannot be dragged to the
trash and when I click get info, it shows the window, but all info is blank or has "-" on place of
the info. Relaunching finder does get rid of the "client node" icon, but does not fix the grayed
out volume in finder.

Aliases (not symlinks) work fine, even upon reboot and still show the same "disk" icon. When you
open the finder window everything on the left menu appears normal and not grayed out either.
The only thing different is the "disk" icon has the little alias arrow on the lower left.

Kj ♘
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User profile for user: V.K.
V.K.
User level: Level 9
56,192 points

Sep 29, 2009 5:14 PM in response to KJK555

i've never seen this client node before. I used it many times one several machines in leopard. just to check I just made a bunch of partitions invisible using chflags on my snow leopard system. interestingly, when I did it to my startup drive it did turn into this "client node" (no other drives did that). this seems new in snow leopard. however, restarting Finder made it go away and it's now hidden as well as all other partitions.
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User profile for user: KJK555
KJK555
User level: Level 4
2,906 points

Sep 30, 2009 2:46 PM in response to V.K.

A little more playing around seems to point to permissions. I always create a
permission/ownership structure on my data volume(s) and disk images that mirror the
ownership/permission structure of the boot volume.

Anyway, I consider the Alias solution as easier to implement, risk free and uncomplicated, so that
is the solution I will be using personally.

Kj ♘
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User profile for user: Taxi Badger
Taxi Badger Author
User level: Level 1
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Oct 1, 2009 10:18 PM in response to Taxi Badger

An update.

I've changed to KJ's solution of hiding all hard drives in Finder prefs after making aliases for the ones I actually want on the desktop. The reason is that I'm not 100% sure that Photoshop liked the "/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/volumename" Terminal command. Although the scratch disk volume seemed to be mounted normally as far as I could tell the checkbox in Photoshop preferences telling it what volumes to use was unchecked whenever I started PS, even when I'd checked it last time. No idea why but it seemed that another approach was needed. Since VK said the "chflags hidden" command did exactly the same thing I've gone with the most straightforward option, which was the one I'd have used before even asking the question if only I'd thought of it in the first place.
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User profile for user: Taxi Badger
Taxi Badger Author
User level: Level 1
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Oct 2, 2009 6:07 AM in response to Tracey-pet'l

Yeah, and I did mention it in the opening post (about halfway through) though only to say that it doesn't hide specific partitions and on it's own isn't a solution to the problem I had. I wanted to hide a single specific partition, but Finder prefs option alone hides everything that appears as a fixed hard drive. See above for what I went with in the end.
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User profile for user: KJK555
KJK555
User level: Level 4
2,906 points

Oct 2, 2009 9:52 PM in response to Taxi Badger

Hi Taxi Badger:
I think both the setfile and chflags command were designed for use on files and folders and not
on devices, and probably received little or no testing during development for use in hiding
hard disk volumes. Chflags and setfile do a fine job on files and folders within a volume
structure and work flawlessly within that environment. When used outside of their design
limits, unpredictable behavior may result.

Kj ♘
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User profile for user: Facescomix
Facescomix
User level: Level 1
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Dec 2, 2009 7:40 PM in response to Taxi Badger

I have a question regarding this subject.

First let me give a little "Back story".

I work for a company that creates photo acquisition and editing kits that are supposed to be fully functional out of the case. That being said there are two accounts, the user and the admin. I also have a fully bootable partition in case they lose a system/app file and I used the terminal to enter the "sudo chflags hidden /volumes/"drive name" command to hide the partition. But I would like to make it visible to the admin and not to the user. Is there a terminal command for that?

Thanks!
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Hiding partitions

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