Q: Drive-ing me insane
I have 3 external drives connected to my Mac Mini. One is OSX formatted which is just groovy, but the other two are formatted for Windows (NTFS).
Now, when I originally purchased those two (now Windows) drives and connected them to a Windows filesystem, they both came with the factory standard volume name and NTFS partitions.And, connected to a Windows machine, I copied heaps of data/files to both the drives and never needed to worry about them, because Windows always associated the same external drive with the same drive letter.
Now I've replaced my Windows system with a Mac Mini. And the fun begins.
Initially I struggled accessing those Windows formatted drives, or more specifically, managing them (writing, deleting, creating folders), but I then found the Tuxera add-on and all was well. BUT my problem is that in Finder, both drives are mounted as Elements (the default volume name of a Western Digital external hard drive these days). Behind the scenes, one is actaully mounted as "Elements" and the other as "Elements 1". No problem, I can access my files... and I'm ok with that.
However. I've now installed software that indexes the files on the drives... and wouldn't you know it... everytime I reboot my Mac Mini, they switch mount identities for lack of a better word. So what was Elements is now Elements 1, and vice versa. Awesome, so all my indexes are buggered, and ever better everything is now duplicated and just a mess. So, I have to delete the indexes and start again... and again (rebooted), and again (rebooted again) etc.
Problem 1. How do I rename the mount/volume (given it's not a OSX native volume)?
I then thought, if I rename the volume from a Windows machine, when it mounts on the Mac Mini that would solve the problem. I renamed both volumes... and taa-daa... nothing. They still mount as Elements. Why?
Problem 2. How do I clear the mount history, or any information that may have been stored in the cache about the external drives? Surely, it should now be going by the updated external drive name, but it isn't so it must be caching this somewhere.
This is uber frustrating, please if anyone has any advice, I would be most appreciative!
Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
Posted on Mar 12, 2012 9:20 AM
Thanks for both trying to be of assistance. I managed to solve the problem, although not very elegant or in most cases practical.
Tuxera allows you to edit everything on the drive, with the exception of the drive's volume name! Which was really a pain... and hopefully this will be addressed in a future release.
The problem was the fact that both drives had the same volume name, and because its not a native OSX volume, there's nothing you can do about it, and OSX handles it the way it does. Not very open-minded from Apple, not natively support NTFS, especially with more and more companies integrating MacBooks in their organisations. This will have to change if Apple want to continue enjoying the successes they have had in the enterprise.
How I solved the problem?
Through the magic of VMware Fusion. I downloaded the public preview of Windows 8, installed it in a VM, and attached each of the USB disks through to the VM. There I could edit the volume name, and the present it back to OSX. And voila! The volume name change stuck! Did this for the other drive, and low-and-behold, my problem has gone away, and I now have two uniquely named USB drives attached to my Mac!
Thanks again for trying to help... I'm still getting a grip on the more technical aspects of OSX and all suggestions were greatly appreciated.
Posted on Mar 15, 2012 6:20 AM
