Mysteriously changed pathnames of my external drives??

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Mysteriously changed pathnames of my external drives??

Hi all. I've been searching everywhere, and haven't been able to find any info on this:

I have a few external drives, and recently my mac has been changing that pathnames.

The drives show up normally ("Disk 1", "Disk 2" etc.) but when I see the path in programs that show the hyarchy, numbers are added:

/Disk 1 2/... now I'm even up to /Disk 1 4/.. so instead of Disk 1, it adds 1, 2, 3, and now even 4 behind it...

In 10years I have never came across this.. and it's obviously screwing up all my programs that want to access files, and since the paths have change they ask me to mount Disk 1 4, but It's just Disk 1.

I am at a total loss.. and hope any of you geniuses has any idea. HELP! thanks in advance!!.

(I'm on OSX10.6.7, MacBook Pro 2.2Ghz, i7 8GB Ram)

Posted on Jul 5, 2011 9:38 AM

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Answer 1

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Jul 5, 2011 11:15 AM in response to Raphael NYC

I would take a look at the /Volumes directory on your startup drive. It is supposed to contain only "mount points" of volumes, with icons that look like aliases. Sometimes, though, real folders can mistakenly get created there, sometimes as a result of a failed copy operation. If /Volumes contains a "ghost" folder with the same name as a real volume, then the system might be unable to mount the real volume without changing the name of the mount point by adding a number to it. Such ghost folders can also waste a lot of disk space.

/Volumes is a hidden folder, but it's easy to peek into it. First eject and physically disconnect all your external drives. Then:

Finder>Go menu> Go to Folder

enter /Volumes and click Go

You should see only alias icons there. If all the external drives are disconnected there would be only one alias, to your startup drive. Do you also see any folders which are NOT aliases, with names similar to your now-disconnected external drives, some with added numbers? If so, look inside the folders to be sure they don't contain things you need, and if they don't, then trash them. Do not trash any aliases! If you now reconnect your external drives they should hopefully mount without the added numbers in the paths.

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Answer 2

Raphael NYC Author

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Jul 5, 2011 2:26 PM in response to jsd2

Yes! you are correct! there are several aliases ther of the drives.. some of which have the "stop sign' instead of the alias icon in the corener. (wow I have never used the finder -go menu EVER.. shame on me) These are exactly the "wrong" paths my computer keeps seeing.

When I try to open these folders it sais "can't be opened because you dont have permission to view its ocntents" When i want to alter de file permissions, it wont let me change it to read & write (eventhough I am the administrator) I also notice that there are 2 "everyone" users, one of which has the privilige "custom" next to it.

Now besides that I also notice the "correct" alias for my Stock 1 drive has it listed as Stock 1 1, enethough it shows up ony desktop as Disk 1... also if I rightclick on the Disk 1 1 icon and If i say -show original- it displays Disk 1

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Answer 3

Raphael NYC Author

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Jul 5, 2011 2:32 PM in response to jsd2

IT WORKED!! you have no idea how long I've been confused about this... all my catalogs where screwed and they work again! Thank you so much.

Do you think possibly Paralells Desktop could have caused this? if not, do you have any other ideas on what causes there faulty aliases to be created?? thanks again, and please let me know if you have any ideas.

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Answer 4

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Jul 5, 2011 3:17 PM in response to Raphael NYC

Glad it worked!

Again, the items that should not be there are actual folders, not aliases. Never delete anything in /Volumes that has a curved alias arrow!

The most common situation that creates these extraneous folders seems to be a failed copy operation - an application is in the middle of writing stuff to the external drive and the external drive unexpectedly becomes inaccessible for some reason. A new "target" folder with the same name as the external volume then gets mistakenly created in the /Volumes folder on the source drive, and the remaining files are copied to that folder. This situation happens most often with clone programs such as SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, but it can happen with other apps as well. The extra folders can apparently also be created in other ways, but I don't know details. I'm not familiar with Parallels.

I would recheck the external drive connections, and would be especially wary of bus-powered drives.

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