External HDD renames itself to ALL CAPS/adds "1" to name

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Level 1

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External HDD renames itself to ALL CAPS/adds "1" to name

Hey all. I'd like to consider myself an expert, but every expert runs into a new problem that they've never seen before. Ha.

Anyways, my cat renamed one of my external HDDs while I was at work to nothing (space bar I guess). So I see the issue when I get back home and rename it back. I try to name it back to "My Book" but after I do it renames itself to "MY BOOK." Upon further investigation it is actually naming itself to "My Book 1" but only showing the end user "MY BOOK."

Normally this wouldn't be an issue I could just name it something else and move on. But I have BackBlaze and it's already backed up at least 700GB of about 1000ishGB. If it's not named exactly back to "My Book" I will have to start my online backup all over again, and it's been backing up for MONTHS now, and it's not even done.

I checked permissions, I tried verify/repair, nothing. I was thinking some program had the hdd "in-use." but there really isn't. And I've relaunched Finder and rebooted the machine.

Thanks for any insight, I really appreciate it. I hope this was the best forum to post this topic in. Lettme know if I need to repost it. Thanks.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2), Unibody, Late 2008-Early 2009

Posted on Jan 12, 2010 1:32 PM

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Answer 1

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William-Boyd-Jr

Level 6

10,578 points

Jan 12, 2010 4:41 PM in response to Enthwar

Enthwar wrote:
Hey all. I'd like to consider myself an expert, but every expert runs into a new problem that they've never seen before. Ha.

Anyways, my cat renamed one of my external HDDs while I was at work to nothing (space bar I guess). So I see the issue when I get back home and rename it back. I try to name it back to "My Book" but after I do it renames itself to "MY BOOK." Upon further investigation it is actually naming itself to "My Book 1" but only showing the end user "MY BOOK."

Normally this wouldn't be an issue I could just name it something else and move on. But I have BackBlaze and it's already backed up at least 700GB of about 1000ishGB. If it's not named exactly back to "My Book" I will have to start my online backup all over again, and it's been backing up for MONTHS now, and it's not even done.

I checked permissions, I tried verify/repair, nothing. I was thinking some program had the hdd "in-use." but there really isn't. And I've relaunched Finder and rebooted the machine.

Welcome to Apple's discussion groups. I'd say this is as good a section for your post as any.

This thread may explain your problem:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10813505

If so, dismount your external drive, then use the Finder menu item Go -> Go to Folder to visit "/Volumes" (without the quotes). Delete anything you see there with a name resembling your external drive.

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Answer 2

Enthwar Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 25, 2010 2:36 PM in response to William-Boyd-Jr

Thanks for the welcome and reply, but unfortunately this does not seem to of solved my problem. I eventually got it back somehow (I cannot for the life of my remember how I did it) but it happened again.

I went to your link, and the instructions do not help, or they don't make sense.

I only see the "My Book 1" along with a couple of extra volumes which are fine. "Deleting" would just unmount the drive, and once it's connected back up again it has the same name... Am I missing something?

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Answer 3

Jan 26, 2010 12:17 PM in response to Enthwar

Enthwar wrote:
Thanks for the welcome and reply, but unfortunately this does not seem to of solved my problem. I eventually got it back somehow (I cannot for the life of my remember how I did it) but it happened again.

I went to your link, and the instructions do not help, or they don't make sense.

I only see the "My Book 1" along with a couple of extra volumes which are fine. "Deleting" would just unmount the drive, and once it's connected back up again it has the same name..

First dismount any external drives. Next visit "/Volumes" and clean out anything with a name that resembles an external drive. Third, mount your external drive. At this point you should be able to rename it back to the name you want.

If your problem is being caused by the same thing as in the other thread, to prevent that problem long-term, you must prevent any process from trying to access that drive when it's not mounted. This may mean removing one or more startup items for your account.

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