Volume setting not saved

Question

Volume setting not saved

Hello,

My volume settings are not saved when I power-cycle or reset my iMac. I have tried resetting the PRAM, with no effect. In another thread, someone asked me whether my PRAM battery might be getting old; the answer is, probably not, this computer was new as of this January.

One thing that's a little different from my other/previous Macs is that I have a Solid-State Disk (SSD) as startup disk and a standard Hard Drive (HD) for data storage. As recommended by various threads on the subject, to optimize performance while minimizing wear on the SSD, the /Users/xxx directory is on the SSD, but various sub-directories (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, ...) are on the HD. I've noticed that this leads to various odd perturbations (e.g. icons in the Finder sidebar only update when I click on them, can't launch a Parallels virtual machine by double-clicking its icon, ...), but I really don't see how it would be related to my volume settings.

Here's the machine configuration:

iMac (iMac11,3) 27" / 2.93 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16 GB RAM / 251 GB SSD / 2 TB HD

Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K540)

Boot ROM version: IM112.0057.B00

Any help would be much appreciated!

Posted on Jul 13, 2011 5:04 AM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Jul 13, 2011 12:54 PM in response to Philip Keller

Move the Desktop. Library, and Public folders back to the SSD, restart, and see if the problem goes away. I don't have an SSD, but IMO you've moved too much off of it. I routinely run with Documents and Downloads on another volume and there are no drawbacks.

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Answer 2

Jul 19, 2011 5:10 AM in response to baltwo

Thanks for the suggestion. The Library folder is on the SSD, and I don't think the Public folder really has anything to do with this. But I did try moving the Desktop folder back to the SSD; the only thing that changed is that the Desktop icon in the Finder window sidebar is drawn correctly. The volume setting behavior is not changed.

I noticed something else, though: when I increase the volume and restart, the reboot chime is louder. This implies that my volume setting is correctly saved to PRAM, but then something else - during the start-up - cranks it back down. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to track this sort of thing?

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