Filed under: How-tos
TUAW Tip: Showing Desktop Hard Drives on a case-by-case basis
In my recent Mac 101 post, I showed you how to use Finder preferences to hide hard drives, CDs, and so forth in your Finder. Several readers contacted me asking how to display Desktop drives on a case-by-case basis, so here's a quick follow-up post.
The secret is that Finder's preferences will show or hide actual volumes, i.e. any item that appears in OS X's /Volumes folder: partitions, iPods, CDs, DVDs, etc. But it doesn't control the display of aliases. So here's what you do.
- Show all hard drives. Open Finder -> Preferences. Select the General pane and check "Hard disks".
- Create aliases. Select a hard drive you want to keep on your Desktop. Control-click (or right-click) the drive and choose Make Alias from the contextual pop-up. Finder creates an alias file for the drive. Repeat for each drive you want to keep.
- Hide the drives. Return to Finder -> Preferences and uncheck "Hard disks". Your hard drive icons go away but the aliases remain.
- Rename the alias. If desired, return to the Desktop and rename each alias so it looks more like the original item. The arrow that appears at the bottom left of the drive icon indicates that you're dealing with aliases and not the original drive.
Be aware that View -> Arrange By does not treat aliases as drives, so your disk may end up in an unexpected position after arranging.
Thanks everyone who suggested aliases.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sean Todd said 1:32PM on 4-28-2007
You can also use the SetFile utility in the developpers tools if you are comfortable with the Terminal. SetFile allows you to show and hide any file/folder in your system.
Reply
Leonard Nimrod said 1:31PM on 4-28-2007
How about showing CDs, DVDs & iPods on the desktop, but not your iDisk?
Reply
Stephen Macklin said 1:34PM on 4-28-2007
if the idea is to clean up icon's you don't want on your desktop - what is the benefit of replacing them with aliases?
I would make a folder of the the aliases somewhere, documents folder perhaps, and then add that folder to the dock. Then you have a menu of all your hidden disks.
Reply
Jordan Duke said 1:35PM on 4-28-2007
How could i hide external drives?
Reply
niepi said 1:35PM on 4-28-2007
Spezial Tip for BootCamp User: rename your Windows Drive so it begins with ".", then OSX would not display the drive on your Desktop, because of it is now a hidden File
Reply
drg said 2:15PM on 4-28-2007
Aliases are fine and most practical I know, but who wants to permanently showcase on their desktop those god-awful curds of an alias' twisted arrow? What about those other type of alias; "links", or whatever they're called?
Reply
Ralph said 3:13PM on 4-28-2007
niepi,
how do i rename the windows drive on my desktop? when i try, it doesn't allow it. its not even in the contextual menu. i assume this means it's unwritable or something so how do you do it?
Reply
andrew harrison said 5:47PM on 4-28-2007
ralph you need to do it in windows, not from os x [os x can't write to ntfs partititons]
Reply
aaronparker said 5:50PM on 4-28-2007
"how do i rename the windows drive on my desktop? when i try, it doesn't allow it. its not even in the contextual menu. i assume this means it's unwritable or something so how do you do it?"
You must boot into Windows to change the drive name. OS X will not allow you to rename a file to something that begins with "." because it is "reserved by the system."
Not only that, but if your Windows drive is formatted as NTFS, you cannot rename the file from within OS X anyways, since OS X does not have the ability to write to a NTFS formatted drive.
Reply
aaronparker said 5:51PM on 4-28-2007
Errr, yeah, what Andrew said. ;-)
Reply
Sparks said 10:04PM on 4-28-2007
If you have the Apple Developer Tools installed, you can actually open a Terminal window, and do:
cd /Volumes
/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V HardDrive
Where 'HardDrive' is the drive you want hidden from Finder. That sets the Invisible file attribute on the mount point, which will make it vanish from the Desktop and so on. I do this to conceal my Windows XP partition on my dual-boot MBP; it does not actually remove the drive, just hides the mount point.
Parallels, the bootloader, etc., all find it fine, as does anything else like Disk Utility or suchnot. :)
Reply
Frank Furter said 10:21PM on 4-28-2007
I'd just be happy to have my drives stay where I left them. EVERY TIME I REBOOT. Sheesh.
Reply
jbseymour said 5:12PM on 5-03-2007
I created an apple script to hide any disk that you want. I created it to hide my windows partition. I think it will also hide externals as well. It uses the setfile command so you need the developer tools installed. I don't have the apple script with me but if anyone wants it let me know where I can post it so others can download it.
Reply
Jessi said 6:28PM on 4-30-2007
I have desktop display disabled for my volumes, but I can always get them by opening a Finder window and going to the top level. Even if you don't have them in your sidebar, your volumes will show up at the root level. Who needs anything more? Not me.
Reply
Austen said 9:01PM on 4-30-2007
Oh yeah! Couldn't help noticing a firefly dvd in your drive. Thank you! someone else who watches that AWESOME show!
Reply
Joe said 6:27PM on 5-16-2007
I'd love to get that script. I have just bought a new mac pro. My plan is to use 2 drives as the system & files, the other two drives as copies of them for backup purposes. If the second set of drives were not visible on the desktop, that would be fine!
HOWEVER: will the system still see them? (i.e show in disk utility or other utilities, be able to be written to etc.)?
Please post where I can download the script! Thanks!
Reply