how to disable the internal hard drive

I'd also recommend you try to use my util to auto disable your second drive on booting OS with an opportunity to enable it in one command whenever after. Please check it out: https://github.com/igorleanch/2ndrive

leanch wrote:

I'd also recommend you try to use my util to auto disable your second drive on booting OS with an opportunity to enable it in one command whenever after. Please check it out: https://github.com/igorleanch/2ndrive

Um, why is this needed and how have you tested it?

fstab controls disk mounting and is built in to OS X/ macOS.

fstab can set a disk to never mount on startup with one line in /etc/fstab e.g.

UUID=YOUR-UUID-HERE none hfs rw,noauto

diskutil can mount a volume that has been setup not to mount in fstab.

You are solving a problem that already has an answer built into the OS.

Your script also fails on 10.9 (with a disk called '10.6'). What OS's have you tested?

The command you use…

diskutil info [device-name] | grep '10.6'

…does not include the name of any partitions when I do have a disk of that name attached.

You script also ejects entire disks which may contain other volumes, that is not an accurate method to handle multiple partitions.

Sorry to sound so negative but this is doesn't look very good.

1) I put the second hard drive to my MacBook Pro. Commonly I use SSD only and sometimes I need to use my second storage for example to use large media libraries. Why I need to boot this disk, listen his noise and waste my battery? The script solves all these problems. And if I want to connect it again I just have to run one simple command.

2) I believe there is a difference between unmounting and physical disabling a drive. If I just unmount it then physically it still be working.

3) I've test it on macOS Sierra 10.12

4) The instruction asks to find out a media name of your physical drive instead of a volume because the aim of the script is to disable his at all.

5) If you are interested then in the nearest future I intend to upgrade it in some way of simplification until degree of just 1 step to be able just choose a number of listed drive s in order to disable his automatically loading.

2) What you believe is not entirely correct. Having a disk spin down does save power but you would have to physically remove it to have it 'detach' from the system. An internal disk remains attached to a system whether you use 'diskutil eject' or if you prevent mounting of all volumes via fstab. Your script makes no difference to using fstab. You can still mount an attached disk via 'diskutil mount disk [device_name]'. You get no extra benefit from your script.

3) The original poster is on 10.6.8, if you are going to recommend this script you need to test on that version. It doesn't work on 10.9 so I doubt earlier versions will work either.

5) You don't need your script. The OS already has a system for this feature - fstab. It seems unwise to reinvent something that is already built in - I'm also guilty of making similar mistakes (as are other posters here) 🙂

Adding more complexity to your script it seems like a wasted effort to me, I wish you luck with it but I hope you can see that there is actually a 'unix way' already built in to the OS to manage disk mounting - a single text file configures it for you. A single command will also mount that disk on request.

Sometimes the correct answer is to read the manual.

https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPag es/man5/fstab.5.html

or 'man fstab' in Terminal…

...

The option ``auto'' can be used in the ``noauto'' form to cause a file system not to be mounted

automatically (with ``mount -a'', or system boot time).

Hopefully the original poster has solved their issue in the five years since they posted here.

Cheers

Pete