Finder shows only aliases and no files!

I recently reinstalled a 2008 mini with 10.5.8 to regain the use of deleted iLife and on its way to using Snow Leopard after a disasterous loss of use of peripherals following 'upgrading' to Lion. It's main use is as a storage drive so I don't spend much time gazing at it, hence my surprise to see that, in Finder, the startup volume - it has three partitions - only shows drive alaises and no files or folders at all.

This occurs when the said main partition 'Hard Disk' icon is selected in the sidebar and only aliases for the other partitions and attached drives show on the right pane. When the 'Computer' icon is selected, all drives appear on the right and when the main partition is selected, its full complement of files etc. is shown. It is as though the contents of the /Volumes folder is all that the main drive's icon can display.

I have run Disk Utility and Repaired Disk Permissions the said partition/volume and Verify Disk-ed the whole hard disk.

Although my intention is to upgrade this install to Snow Leopard, I don't want to do that only to find myself with a crippled drive display.

Any suggestions about getting the drive to display correctly?