Volume Icons do not appear on Desktop

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Level 1

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Volume Icons do not appear on Desktop

Hi

I have several external Harddrives and due to severe problems with the internal Harddrive and also with a external one at the same time I decided to split System, Applications (3rd pary) and Data on my Mac. Due to the mentioned problems I have four external drives with more than one partition. With a Startup AppleScript I unmount the unused Partitions (diskutil umount volume_name). Works fine, but since some days some Volume Icons do not appear on the desktop even they are mounted. Even all Volume Icons of all Partitions of a Harddisk could not displayed on the Desktop.

the Lack of Display on the Display changes form Hard drive to hard drive. There is no logic.

I can open a folder with «Go to ... -> Go to folder...». In the Finder Window with target «/Volumes/» the Volume Icons appears, but not on the Desktop.

Is this a bug in OS X (Mavericks [only])? My Script and the display of the Volume Icons did work with 10.9.1 but the Problem started with it. After Update to 10.9.2 the same problem.

Any hints or help?

Thanks for your attention

Hans from Zurich

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Mar 1, 2014 11:10 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 1, 2014 11:15 AM in response to Haenselpeter

Hey Hans,

Have you tried toggling the setting to show external volumes in finder preferences?

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

84,472 points

Mar 2, 2014 7:25 AM in response to Haenselpeter

Not sure exactlly why you are splitting up thing into so many volumes on different drives. With OS X it is actually faster if OS X, Apps and everyday files are all in the same volume.

I keep most of my stuff on my Internal HD and then make bootable clones to External HD's.

I also have other off line External HDs, another that holds a weekly clone in the fire safe and a couple of smaller ones that hold old unused stuff.

If your Internal HD is to small for all of your stuff, (I upgraded my 2010 Mini from the 320GB to a faster 500GB HGST a couple of years ago) then move unused files to an external for safe keeping. Or optionally you can move your iPhoto or iTunes Libraries off to an External HD and then back them up using a second External to be safe.

iPhoto: How to move the Library folder to a new location

iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder

-------------------------------------

To follow up: I'm not sure what is the best advise for you, but

1. Personally I would stop using Automator to hide volumes.

2. Put OS X, my App's and all my everyday files back into one Macintosh HD volume.

3. Clean up two of those External HD's (one on line, one off line) to backup the Macintosh HD.

4. Keep all unused files off line on a third External HD.

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Answer 3

Haenselpeter Author

Level 1

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Mar 2, 2014 2:24 AM in response to Haenselpeter

Hi. Thank you all for your answers.

Before I posted my problem in this forum I was googling before about this problem and I also tried to toggle the Finder Prefs I do know quite well since 10.1. Toggling Album/Artists names in iTunes works well for updating/correcting the Display of Albums, but in Finder without any success.

Just a minute ago I tried it again.

I also cannot unmount and mount my not displayed Apps-Partition with diskutil and Disk Utility because there are some processes running which are started from there. And there are also no commands in diskutil for displaying Icons on desktop.

One mounted Partition (seldom used as clone of the backup partition) is regularly not displayed on the desktop after boot/startup. I can unmount the invisible Partition and remount it with success. But on this partition is really not much activity.

The Partition scheme is always GUID (recommanded for HFS journaled Drives). All partions are formated with HFS+jounaled except the Windows-Partition.

After the first appearance of the problem I was also running Onyx for deleting caches. No success.

After all I guess that could be a timeout problem at startup. Some disks need probably more/too much time to activate and mount.

Your Help and Hints are further appreciated

Best greetings from the rainy Zurich

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Answer 4

Haenselpeter Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 2, 2014 7:42 AM in response to den.thed

Hello. Thank you for your answer!

I have still FreeHand Files to convert on my Archive/Backup-Harddrives (from 1995 to 2006). I have also 1500 legally ripped CDs, 24000 scanned analog color Slides/BW-Negatives on my Harddrives and a lot of Drupal- und FileMaker-Projects on it too. So I need Snow Leopard as well as Mavericks. As a Visual Basic Programmer (VBA and IIS) I need also old MS Office-Versions because I can't prescribe my customers what I prefer.

With the Apps Partition I can use the same apps on Snow Leo and on Mavericks.

I still have a G4 Powerbook for data conversion.

Greetings from Zurich

Hans