Internal disk randomly appears in sidebar in Finder

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Internal disk randomly appears in sidebar in Finder

Not *randomly* per-se, but...

Everytime I open a disk image (Any disk image. I tried one I made myself, and other downloaded ones from online), my Data HD disk appears in my sidebar.

Not just *in my sidebar*, but in my *Favourites* section of the sidebar, intruding and messing up the order of things.

I can reproduce it 100% percent of the time; it just appears there, I need to manually remove it... then it appears again when I mount another DMG.

EDIT: I just tried: I have several partitions, mounting *anything*. Anything at all, will cause this **** icon to appear. I have also tried mounting it with the 'nobrowse' option, to no avail.

Just a note: I'm using TotalFinder, but this behavior occurs even after I *killall Finder* and open the icon (which kills TF until I open it again).

System info: OS X on an SSD in the optical bay slot, using an OptiBay. The 'Data HD' I speak of is in the original slot, and is one of 3 partitions there, including a clone of my SSD and a TM drive.

Very odd, because this behaviour doesn't occur with my other internal partitions; My guess? The fact that I have an alias from a Movies folder to my home folder. I tried making it a symlink instead (maybe...?) but nothing noteworthy happened.

EDIT 2: I just tried to make an alias from the 'Developer' folder on my SSD clone drive (same physical drive as that 'Data HD') and trying to replicate the effect: Nothing, only Data HD shows up still.

MacBook (13-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Sep 15, 2012 8:58 AM

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Answer 1

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macjack

Level 10

111,168 points

Sep 15, 2012 9:11 AM in response to aperturedev

What happens in a fresh user account?

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Answer 2

aperturedev Author

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Sep 15, 2012 9:21 AM in response to macjack

Aha, the behaviour is not exhibited. Strange. I'll try copying my data to an external drive, then erasing that partition to see what happens.

Should I?

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Answer 3

macjack

Level 10

111,168 points

Sep 15, 2012 9:29 AM in response to aperturedev

Try this first...

Go to your Finder "Go" menu hold the option key and choose Library. Then go to Preferences folder and trash these files:

com.apple.finder.plist

com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Then, restart, or log out and in again.

(You will have to reset a few finder prefs the way you like them.)

EDIT: I'd also disable Total Finder in System Preferences/Users & Groups/Login Items, for testing.

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Answer 4

aperturedev Author

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Sep 15, 2012 9:38 AM in response to macjack

et voila, all the problems are solved. I thank you!

Them prefrence files. The only thing I know more convoluted than a bunch of .plist files in a folder is a bunch of binary files in a system folder containing data that translates to a series of files and folders that are often dirty and whatnot.

If you get my drift.

Any idea *how* this problem manifested?

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Answer 5

macjack

Level 10

111,168 points

Sep 15, 2012 10:05 AM in response to aperturedev

Glad it's sorted!

Any idea *how* this problem manifested?

You said it, plist files are small text files that can get corrupted fairly easily. If you're ready to re-trace every operation you ever did in Finder, you might find it 😉

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Answer 6

aperturedev Author

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Sep 20, 2012 1:46 AM in response to macjack

EDIT: The problem cropped up again. This time, no deleting .plist files, restarting or whatnot fixes the problem. Sigh.

Any idea? I hope 10.8.2 addresses this...

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Answer 7

yonnetti

Level 1

5 points

Nov 21, 2012 6:02 AM in response to aperturedev

I think I found a fix. The drive that would show in my favorites list wasn't my system drive, just another internal storage drive. So I enjected it, opened up a .dmg file and it didn't post the drive icon in my sidebar - Ya! So I mounted the drive back and opened a .dmg file again and no icon in my sidebar!

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Answer 8

Dec 31, 2012 5:29 AM in response to aperturedev

I suspect this is due to having your dropbox folder in that drive. I've had the same problem and read somewhere this was the problem (can't find the forum where I read this) and I haven't been able to find a solution to this.

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Answer 9

Dec 31, 2012 5:35 AM in response to Jakob Renpening

I'm sorry. It's not due to Dropbox but by the fact of having a folder in Favorites from the external drive. Curiously Finder decides to bring the whole disk to the favorites section when a drive/dmg is mounted.

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Answer 10

akbarali

Level 1

8 points

Jan 27, 2013 3:36 AM in response to aperturedev

That was irritating, and these kind of problems are hard to describe and search too. but somehow i got this thread, thanks guys for creating it. I liked what "Jakob Renpening" said so I removed the dropbox icon from favorites and then tried opening the dmg files several times, it doesnt adds my hdd to favourite. Its solved for now.

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