How can I restore default drive icons (unwanted change by driver upgrade)

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How can I restore default drive icons (unwanted change by driver upgrade)

I've just installed the latest drivers for my Western Digital MyBook external USB drives. Without warning or asking me, this replaced my nice default OSX icons for those particular drives with their own ugly one.

How can I restore the original default icon? Trying to delete the icon in the 'get info' window does nothing.

Thanks,
Scott

iMac 2GHz C2D, Mac OS X (10.6.3), 3GB DDR2 RAM

Posted on Mar 30, 2010 3:31 PM

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Answer 1

jlubey

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10 points

Mar 30, 2010 5:27 PM in response to Haute Pie

if you show hidden files in finder, you can then see the hidden file that shows the icon for the drive. you double click the drive to open it, and you will see a file ".iconname" Delete this and it will reset to the default osx icon

to show hidden files in finder, type this into terminal

sudo defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
it will then ask you for your password (type it in and press enter)

then type this:
killall Finder

delete the file, then to hide hidden files again, type this in terminal:
sudo defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

let me know how that works

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Answer 2

Haute Pie Author

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9 points

Mar 30, 2010 6:11 PM in response to Haute Pie

Strange.

The terminal command (which I've used before) does nothing for some reason. I get asked for my password but no hidden files appear. I've just upgraded to 10.6.3 if that matters.

And I definitely do have some .htaccess files, just for example, on my desktop which I can see via my ftp browser. Odd.

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Answer 3

jlubey

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10 points

Mar 30, 2010 6:35 PM in response to jlubey

ok nevermind try this....

select the hd on the desktop, hit command + i, in the get info palette, click on the icon in the upper left hand area of that little windows top section under general, then click Edit and click cut. that should do it.

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Answer 4

Haute Pie Author

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9 points

Mar 30, 2010 6:43 PM in response to jlubey

Yes, I'd like the original, default icon back.

To be fair, that method sounds more like a workaround more than a fix — which I'd be grateful for by the way — I'm just hacked off this has happened and I can't seem to be able to undo it.

*

Just saw your second post.

No, I said in my original post, 'Trying to delete the icon in the 'get info' window does nothing.' The delete key does nothing (normally does the same thing there) and 'cut' is greyed out in the menu. It's like it's overwritten the default icon for external volumes, but surely it can't have done that?! I don't have any other drives to test if that's the case.

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Answer 5

jlubey

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10 points

Mar 30, 2010 7:21 PM in response to jlubey

ok sorry it took so long to get back to you
here is a link for all the default mac osx volume icons. pick the one that you want, rename it .VolumeIcon.icns then drag it onto the drive to copy it onto the drive. that should do it (you made need to logout/restart)

yea, this is an odd workaround, but it will work. im not sure how else you could do it

http://www.mediafire.com/file/qzayz4joyiw/ICONS.zip

Message was edited by: jlubey

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Answer 6

Haute Pie Author

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9 points

Mar 31, 2010 11:13 AM in response to jlubey

Nope, that didn't work either. I tried logging out and then restarting but neither had an effect.

Here's an screencap in case you can see something wrong?
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/5919/screenshot20100331at185.png

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Answer 7

Haute Pie Author

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9 points

Mar 31, 2010 11:24 AM in response to Haute Pie

What did work was opening the .icns in preview then doing [select all > copy] then going to the drive's 'get info' window and pasting that over the cräp icon. I now (apparently) have my old icons back.

However, pressing [delete] over this replaced icon in the 'get info' window reverts it back to the cräp Western Digital icon again. Therefore, the default icon for these drives is still that icon, which I don't want on my system at all.

Thank you very much for your help, although I'm not marking this as solved until I have a solution for reverting my drive icons properly.

Message was edited by: Haute Pie

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Answer 8

jlubey

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10 points

Mar 30, 2010 6:22 PM in response to Haute Pie

this is weird- i tried it and it didnt work, so i tried doing it without sudo in front and that did the trick... let me know if that works for you

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Answer 9

Haute Pie Author

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9 points

Mar 30, 2010 6:26 PM in response to jlubey

Yep that works, I can see hidden files now, but I can't see any icon files. Where exactly should I be looking? There's nothing in the root of my drives.

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Answer 10

jlubey

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10 points

Mar 30, 2010 6:29 PM in response to Haute Pie

if the drive is mounted on your desktop, just double click on it to show the finder window. there should be a hidden file named .VolumeIcon.icns that you need to delete

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