Stop external disk from auto-mounting

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Stop external disk from auto-mounting

This may sound unusual, but is there any way to suppress auto-mounting of an external hard disk?

I partitioned an external disk into three partitions, two of which just hold cloned, bootable backups of Macs before I re-installed them. I only keep these around for emergencies and in case I forgot to copy some data over, but I do not usually use them. In fact, I'd prefer to not mount them to prevent any possible tampering.

The largest part of this disk is set up for Time Machine though, so I keep it connected to my Mac. I only want the Time Machine partition to mount though. Is there a way to mark the two other partitions to not auto-mount every time the Mac starts up?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 12, 2009 7:46 PM

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Answer 1

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V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Oct 12, 2009 7:48 PM in response to Deceze

it's possible but requires some terminal work. if you are not comfortable with terminal I'd advise you to forget it. otherwise see this link
http://www.macosxhints.com/comment.php?mode=display&format=threaded&order=ASC&pi d=54077

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Answer 2

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 12, 2009 7:53 PM in response to Deceze

See Prevent a given partition from mounting at boot , How to prevent a drive volume from mounting , or Prevent Mac OS X from mounting a hard drive volume at boot as a start. Or do a Google search which is where the above were found.

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Answer 3

Deceze Author

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Oct 12, 2009 8:06 PM in response to Kappy

Thank you for the links, but I do not appreciate the +just google it+ attitude. I did an extensive Google search and all I could come up with were +"my disk doesn't mount!"+ topics. Good on you that you hit the right keywords, apparently I didn't.

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Answer 4

Kappy

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Oct 12, 2009 8:18 PM in response to Deceze

You're welcome for the links which I wouldn't have posted had i wanted to adopt a "just google it attitude." The point was to suggest that other articles might be found as well. I'm glad you think you did an extensive search but it's unlikely that's the case. There were no magic keywords, but perhaps I tried harder to get the search to yield desired results. So don't go biting my head off for helping you.

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Answer 5

Deceze Author

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Oct 12, 2009 8:30 PM in response to Kappy

Let's just say I spend more than 10 minutes on Google trying to find answers, but could only come up with the opposite "Help, HDD doesn't mount" topics. You decide whether this is extensive or not, I still didn't hit the right combination of keywords to find "don't mount HDD" topics.

Thanks again!

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Answer 6

Kappy

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361,741 points

Oct 12, 2009 8:34 PM in response to Deceze

Here's what I used for my Google search, "os x prevent disk partition from mounting." Try it if you are unable to solve your problem with the links I listed (they are a couple of years old and newer ones may be around that i did not look for.)

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Answer 7

Deceze Author

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Oct 12, 2009 8:43 PM in response to Kappy

The first link with the entry in fstab worked fine, even on the latest Snow Leopard.

Just for the record, add an entry like this to the file /etc/fstab (requires admin permissions and probably use of the command line):

UUID=F0E430C1-5558-3BB3-9FA9-6904B663FEEA none hfs ro,noauto

The UUID of the drive can be found in Disk Utility in the Info window. The 'ro' means read-only, use 'rw' instead if you ever want to write to the drive.

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