Skip to Content

Terminal Tip: Showing and Hiding Disks using Developer tools

In a couple of recent posts, I showed you how to how to hide drives using Finder preferences and selectively show some of them using aliases. I received a number of emails looking for more elegant solutions i.e. avoiding the look of aliases and their won't-sort-properly-like-a-real-drive behavior. A few readers also asked how to hide their iDisks, which didn't respond to the preferences the same way that hard drives did.

First let me note that iDisks aren't seen by Finder as normal hard drive volumes or, as you might expect, as connected servers. Instead, iDisks are controlled by the CDs, DVDs, and iPods preference--the same preference that shows and hides attached thumb drives and memory card readers.

As for the more elegant volume-by-volume solution, that lies in the realm of Terminal and the command-line developer tool SetFile. You can join the Apple Developer Connection and gain access to the developer tools with a Free ADC Online Membership. After installing the dev tools, you'll find SetFile in the /Developer/Tools folder.

To hide a volume, use the -a V flag with SetFile and then restart Finder. This will hide the iDisk, even in Sync mode

% /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/iDisk/
% killall "Finder"
%

To bring the volume back, use -a v instead. (Notice the lower case "v".)

% /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a v /Volumes/iDisk/
% killall "Finder"
%


In a couple of recent posts, I showed you how to how to hide drives using Finder preferences and selectively show some of them using...
 

Add a Comment

*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

8 Comments

Filter by:
VanillaSpice

Wrong. I am Erica.

May 02 2007 at 8:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Spartacus

No.

*I* am Erica.

May 02 2007 at 8:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
VanillaSpice

No, I am Erica.

May 02 2007 at 8:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
john russell

I used this on my backup drive. Worked like a charm.

May 01 2007 at 5:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris B

Brilliant!

When I created my striped the 4 drives in my MacPro I was left with one 128MB drive that was automatically created called Mac Boot OSX. Considering that a drive of that size is pretty much pointless I've been looking at finding a way to remove that eyesore from my Desktop.

Thanks!

May 01 2007 at 1:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
morgan m

leonard nimrod is erica

May 01 2007 at 12:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

Excellent work, Erica! Thank you for this this.

May 01 2007 at 11:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

You don't have to install the developer tools to get SetFile. Just install Server Admin, and SetFile is installed in /System/Library/ServerSetup/SetFile

May 01 2007 at 11:20 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.