how to NOT mount a harddrive on startup?

There isn't a control panel. You'd have to dig into the unix underpinnings, which I don't know how to do.

Take a look here: http://superuser.com/questions/336455/mac-lion-fstab-is-deprecated-so-what-repla ces-it-to-prevent-a-partition-from-m

There's another way to solve your problem: rather than preventing it from mounting, you could have it automatically dismount after you log in to your user account.

This might not seems as neat as not mounting it at all (after all, the system has to mount then dismount it), but it does have some advantages:

1. It's very quick and simple to set up, and to disable at any time if you wish.

2., It means your disk is still available if you ever have to do some troubleshooting in the recovery HD or Safe Mode (say if your SSD is playing up or something).

Here's how to do it if you wish:

1. Open the Applescript editor (click on Spotlight in the menu bar and type 'applesc' and hit 'return' on your keyboard).

2. Copy and paste the following in the editor window:

tell application "Finder" to eject (first disk whose name starts with "Name")

3. Replace the word "Name" with the first word of the name of your disk as it appears in the Finder sidebar (not the first word in its pathname),. E.g., in Finder sidebar, my disk is called 'Buffalo 500GB HDD', so I'd put 'Buffalo' in the script).

IMPORTANT: be sure to retain the double quotation marks "" around the name of the disk.

4. Now let's test it. Click the 'Compile' button in the task bar and, assuming there's no errors, then 'Run'. Check in Finder sidebar that your disk has disappeared.

If you get any errors on compile or run try deleting the script and typing it by hand. Sometimes copying and pasting text over introduces buggy characters. If you type it, watch the punctuation. If you get errors and can't solve them, post back.

5. Assuming the test works, choose 'Save as' from the Applescript File menu and in the dialogue box change 'File Format' to Application. Choose a location to save to ( /Applications is preferred ) and click the 'Save' button.

6. Go to

 > System Preferences... Users & Groups | Login Items.

Click the '+' sign in the Login Items tab, and add your new application to the list.

7. Restart the mac and test. The disk should dismount after the login process has finished.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57507755-263/how-to-prevent-a-volume-from-m ounting-at-boot-in-os-x/

You have the SSD in the second (DVD) location.

In the early 13" mbp the second location is either 3 or 6GB/s (Sata 2 or Sata 3).

When you have the Sata 2 connector in the DVD location I propose to switch the SSD to location 1 and the HD to location 2: this will have the SSD in the fastest connector.

That being you can also follow another way of thinking: as Softwater rightly says, it has disadvantages to have the HD unmounted completely, with having the possibility to have the second disk bootable in case the SSD will not start is very important. Therefore I propose to not unmount the disk but partition it and regularly make a clone on partition 1, so that you can immediately start with the HD to attack problems.

The life of a normal HD is probably much longer than the SSD, and even longer than the MBP alltogether.

I know that Softwateris a "backup promoter" of the clearest water (sic!) and also promotes making a clone as a bootable backup (as I do).

Think about it.

Very good, it is often forgotten that the dvd location has a lower speed in older machines. Having a solid structure with the setup of your macs, the solution of Softwater is the way I would go too. 🙂.

Well about Media: you better give the disk a very unique name, most usb sticks also carry some media part in the name, rename first, eg "mdesign123"

จริงๆไม่แน่ใจครับ แล้ว...open a new editor window and put this in:

tell application "Finder" to get name of every disk

Hit 'compile' and 'run'. In the 'Result' window at the bottom should be a list of your disk names. Use the name that corresponds to the disk you're trying to unmount in the script I gave you earlier and try again.

mdesignffm wrote:

there is no response whatsoever, no dialogue. there just happens - nothing...

But is it still listed in the Finder sidebar?

There is no dialogue box, and you shouldn't see anything happen; you should only notice that the disk is not in the Finder sidebar any more.

I'm also "clueless" 😮.

It works fine on my machine (I have exactly this set up for dismounting an unwanted volume on an external disk while keeping the other volumes on the same disk mounted).

The only difference I can see is that you're trying to eject a disk that is connected through the DVD bus (whereas I'm doing it on disks mounted through the USB bus).

I can't see why that should make a difference, but I'll look into it further. In the meantime, try this.

Mount the disk in Disk Utility, and then try this version of the script:

try

tell application "Finder" to eject disk "Media 300GB"

on error

display dialog "The disk could not be found or was not ejected."

end try

Does it give you the error message? If not, does it remove the disk from the sidebar?

CORRECT:

I tried your last script, works perfectly on an USB connected disk/partition (outside); did not do anything on the Disk/partition connected to the DVD sata connector (inside). It did not do anything, it did thus not display the error message !