Disable mounting of external drives in guest account

I don't want my guests to mess around with (or even see) my backup partition! How can I do this?
Thanks

It gets even worse. They can also unmount it! What the heck?!? Do you think this is okay, or am I to stupid to find the switch to disable this?

Similar Messages

Is there a way to "force-mount" an external drive that doesn't show up on it's own when plugged in with firewire?

Hi, is there a way to "force-mount" an external drive that doesn't show up on the desktop? I have a new Hitachi SATA III 2 TB Ultrastar that won't show up like all the other drives when plugged in. So I can't partition, repair, format etc with Disk Utility, Disk Drill, Tech Tools etc. How do I make it visible?
I use the FW 400 to 800 adapter and a FW hub.
Thanks,
W.

ok, I did find the log in Diskutil of what happened, I just can't figure out why it happened and how to start over:
2014-04-20 13:42:08 -0400: Disk Utility started.
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400: Preparing to erase : “Terra 8”
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:           Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:           1 volume will be created
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     Name                    : “Terra 8”
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     Size                    : 2 TB
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     File system          : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400: Unmounting disk
2014-04-20 13:45:00 -0400: Creating the partition map
2014-04-20 13:45:01 -0400: Waiting for the disks to reappear
2014-04-20 13:45:01 -0400: Formatting disk2s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Terra 8
2014-04-20 13:45:26 -0400: Initialized /dev/rdisk2s2 as a 2 TB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 155648k journal
2014-04-20 13:45:26 -0400: Mounting disk
2014-04-20 13:45:29 -0400: Erase complete.
2014-04-20 13:45:29 -0400:
- That was it, gone.....

My computer it won't mount my external drive

I restored my computer and after it completed my computer won't mount my external drive, i went to disk utility the disk shows up there but no mounted.
my computer is OS x Mavericks 10.9.5

See mount section in 1st linked article.
Disk Unmount Using Terminal
Disk Utility – Force Mount Disk

Automated mounting of external drive?

I have a MBP and would like to have it mount an external drive when I'm in my home office. If I add the drive to my login list, that works fine as long as I restart when I get home. However, most of the time I put the computer to sleep when I go somewhere, so when I get home the drive is no longer mounted.
Is there an approach or a utility program that would automatically mount the drive when it is available without my having to manually mount it or restart?

My terminology is perhaps incorrect. What I want to do is to connect to a server, not mount an external drive.

How to mount an external drive?

My external drive, used for Time Machine, is not mounting. I've tried Disk Utilities which sees the hardware but not the partition so I can't Verify or Repair. I've run Disk Warrior but it does not see the drive either. (Also tried zapping SMC and the safe-mode reboot.) Since the drive is showing but not mounting, is it reasonable to assume the hardware is okay, but it is something is messed up with the status/data?
I replaced the previous Time Machine disk about 2 months ago because its 2TB had filled up over 5 years. This one seemed to be working fine then today, poof, it's gone.
Thanks for any advice on next things to try. Failing that, suggestions on a good data-recovery service.
bash-3.2$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Computer                    255.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                                                   *4.0 TB     disk1
bash-3.2$

Might try a mount from Terminal with
mount /dev/disk1
Or a force mount...
mount force /dev/disk1

How do I re-mount an external drive in Lightroom 2 running on Windows 7?

I am using Lightroom 2 and have moved many picture folders to an external drive. Now when I reconnect the external drive Lightroom shows the drive as offline. I need to know how to re-mount the drive. I am running Windows 7 and can not fine the disk utility in Lightroom 2.

Lightroom does not have a disk utility.
a) Make sure the drive is visible and accessible via <My Computer>. If it is visible in <My Computer>, Lr should also see it as connected.
b) If it is not check if the power for the drive is <ON> and remove and re-connect the USB / Firewire / eSata cable.
c) If this doesn't help: Check in <My Computer> if the drive has the same drive letter as before. Sometimes Win 7 changes the drive letter, and then Lr cannot find the drive.
In this case you have to change the drive letter to what it was before.
d) If the drive letter has not changed and Lr still cannot see the drive, try this:
Put one dummy photo on the external drive - via Win Explorer. It can be a copy of another photo but - in Win Explorer - change the name of the dummy photo to something descriptive.
Then in Lr open the Import Dialog and import this dummy photo. After that Lr should see the drive and you can delete the dummy photo.

Mount an external drive that use to be the os x main drive

I had this problem for a while and when clean my room i found the drive again.here is the issue. I was upgrading my mac pro with a new 1Tb drive and replace the 250g drive that it came with.I first tried to use the migrate tool to transfer my things over but i noticed that it did do it all. I tried to mount the drive as an external so i can see what is on it so then i can finally reformat it. When i plugged it the drive didnt mount. I went to disk utities and it was in there so i hit open the hard drive but i only saw a few folders and when i tried to see folders like pictures it took me back to this harddrives picture folder.

Thanks for your reply LexSchellings, There is no disc in the drive and I went through the suggestions you put forward on the phone with Apple support without any luck. I can put a disc in but it pops straight back out again without registering on finder.
The idea of using an external drive was to enable me to avoid the cost and loss of productivity whilst machine in repair... if I have to take it in to get the old drive removed than I might as well have a new internal drive put in, although I do worry about the reliability of these apple drives given my experience with this one coupled with my limited online research ... on line forums seem to be full of people with the same problem (although perhaps searching such forums is bound to make it seem a common problem as users with perfectly working machines are less likely to post (?)) Your reply suggests that no external drive will work whilst the existing drive is in place.
As a postscript: I do realise that this is a user forum ...my secondary question was asking if anyone knows how to put forward a case/complaint to Apple... I can't find a link on the support page that would enable me to do so and I was wondering if anyone on this user forum had any ideas/experience..

Auto mount/eject external drive for time machine backup/restore

I have an Iomega ultramax drive connected via firewire 800 for my Time machine backups.
This drive will automatically spin down after a period of non-use. I like this as it means lower power usage and lower risk of data loss (head crashes etc..).
My problem is, when the drive spins down like this, some file open operations pause until the drive spins up again. I cannot remember exactly which applications I have had the problem with, but I assumed that this was part of the OS. This delay can be up to 5 seconds or so and is really annoying.
Assuming this is not just a specific third party application thing. My suggestion to Apple is to do one or both of the following:
1) Multi thread the file open dialog (process?) so that is comes up instantly, and then adds the drive when it has spun up.
2) Modify time machine so that it can automatically mount/eject the external drive just when doing backups and restores.
Currently I have a bit of a messy work around to this problem where I have a loadd scheduled shell script that runs every hour that mounts the drive, runs time machine to backup and the ejects the drive. It works, but is not perhaps as nice a solution as it could be.
Does anybody else suffer from this problem?

Yes that is correct, the drive spins down and remains mounted.
To be perhaps clearer. The problem is not essentially a time machine problem, it is to do with whatever implements the file open capability that other apps use. In the above sitation, there is always a delay for the drive to spin up when I go to open a file (perhaps five seconds) in other applications. I assume this delay is caused by the file open process waiting until some data is retrieved from the external drive before giving me the option of choosing a file. This delay is annoying, as I do not ever want to open a file from my external drive (this is dedicated to time machine backups) when I am using pages, or any other application other than a time machine restore.
This particular issue is similar (but I suspect nowhere near as bad) as one of my pet hates about windows XP. In windows it appears that the explorer will wait for a response on all its connected drives (hard disks, mounted cds, network drives), so any sort of network connectivity or hardware delay will cause explorer to freeze. As explorer seems to be embedded in most things you do with the OS, this can cause anything or everything to freeze (web browsing, you name it).
In my setup, as I have the external drive totally dedicated to time machine backups, another thing that would fix the problem for me is the suggestion number 2 I suggested where time machine auto mounts for the backup and then ejects after the backup. With the feature, then the external drrive will only ever be mounted for short periods of time (the above problem does not ocurr if the external drive is not mounted), and when it is mounted it will be spinning, so I will never have my file open delay. I would however have a short delay when doing a time machine restore for the mount of the drive, but this is a much rarer event the using file open in all my other apps.
Thanks for the info on the feedback link, I will post this to that.

Can't mount my external drive

I have a MacBook Pro 15", 2.8 GH, Snow Leopard 10.3; I bought it on september, 2009. I also have an external Western Digital hard drive: 2TB, MacBook Studio II. I use it for back up only, through Time Machine; the disk itself was bought in december 2009.
A week or so I connected my MBP through the firewire port and it the disk didn't mount automatically as it usually does. Time Machine simply says that it can't back up because the hard drive isn't available. I restarted the computer with the drive connected, but nothing happened.
The first time this happened I just droped it. A few hours later I connected the disk again and, voila, it was there, as usual.
This week I have the same problem again. Only this time, after a few hours, I can't still see the disk. I've checked on the Western Digital website and they have no drivers at all.
What can I do? What can possibly be wrong?

Can you see the drive in Disk Utility? If so, can you get it to mount with the mount button? Can you use Disk Utility to repair it?
Also, do you have any other FW devices you can try to check out the port itself?
I don't really know what the problem is. I had something similar happen to me with my iBook, where the external FW drive didn't mount at all and couldn't be seen by Disk Utility either. I then tried a USB cable and the drive mounted. After doing the backup, Super Duper wouldn't force quit and the iBook froze--even the beach ball froze. I had to shut down using the power button.
Next I tried the drive on my MBP FW port, and it mounted. I decided to repair the backup and it had errors that would not repair. I then erased and reformatted it. I then tried the iBook FW port and the drive mounted. I then did another Super Duper backup, and ever since, the drive has mounted and worked without issue.
Don't know if any of this sheds any light, but I eventually surmised that the FW port on the iBook must have not been working properly, but that the shutdown and restart seems to have reset it.
I'm thinking it might not hurt to go through the procedure to shut down your computer to reset the ports:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317?viewlocale=en_US
It also wouldn't hurt to boot from your install disc and navigate to Disk Utility and repair your boot drive. Also use Disk Utility to repair your external drives. I took all of these steps, and have had no issues since.
Good luck!

Can I choose which hard drives the guest account has access to?

I have a Mac pro with 3 hard drives, the operating system is on one and private documents on another and the third one is a backup time machine device. If I enable a guest account so my housemate can use my mac can I restrict his access to the hard drive with my private documents on it? And if so how can I do this?
Thanks in advance

Start with http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060930150059172

Mounting an external drive in Terminal?

Hi,
I've been trying to find the commands to use to mount an external firewire drive from the Terminal. The external drives I use to back up my laptop have stopped mounting in the Finder. (The drives are fine: I can mount them on my office computer. Also, USB drives work fine.) System Profile can "see" the drives, as can Terminal (ls /Volumes), but Disk Utility cannot.
I am loathe to send my computer back to Apple (they think my FireWire port has gone bad), but will if I need to. But first, it occurred to me to see if there's a Terminal command I can use to see if I can get the disk mounted. I've searched and searched and know there's a "mount" command but am unsure what might come after that. I'm pretty sure Apple Support wouldn't take people into the Terminal but I don't mind trying to use it. (I've only used it before to run maintenance scripts.) Any ideas?
Thank you for any advice.
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

In the Terminal, with df you get a list of connected
disks. With sudo diskutil mount disk mount this.
Hmm, I'm a little confused. i can't seem to find my FireLite drive usign "df". All I get is stuff i can't understand. I do see the FireLite disk when I type "ls /Volumes". I can't tell from your post what is an actual command to be typed into terminal and what is simply a general instruction. Sorry to be so lacking in background here.
Do I type "sudo diskutil mount FireLite," or "sudo diskutil mount disk" and then some other command? Neither works.
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Disable spotlight for External Drives

I have 5 macs, and several USB and Firewire drives. Most of these external drives are plugged into different machines from time to time. None sit permanantly in any machine (because most of my machines are laptops).
I'd like to prevent Spotlight from indexing my External drives.
I know I can (after plugging in a EXT drive), use the privacy function in the Spotlight Preferences. But with a dozen or so external drives (HDD and Thumb) on 5 machines, that's too much work each time I plug a drive into a machine.
I read that the existence of a ".metadata_never_index" file prevents Spotlight indexing. I assume this works, but it's hard to tell for sure, because the moment I plug a drive in, my machine seems to start indexing faster than I can create this file. So I wind up with a .Spotlight-V100 directory. I was hoping that OSX would delete this for me after I set Privacy or add the ".metadata_never_index" file. But it does not. It may be that I have to delete it manually (probably because Privacy is a COMPUTER setting (not on HDD setting).
QUESTIONS:
Does the ".metadata_never_index" file supported by OSX (Mavericks and MtnLion).
Can I delete the .Spotlight-V100 directory in my EXT Drives, without the risk of causing a problem?
If I put a ".metadata_never_index" file in /Volume, will it effectively prevent indexing on any mounted drive, without affecting the Macintosh HD indexing?
Is there an non-invisible equivilent to ".metadata_never_index" (so it's more obvious when indexing is turned off).

Glad you found that helpful.
The Privacy listing for a given external only disappears when the external isn't attached; it reappears when it is attached so either a local record of "Don't Index" is only shown as necessary or, more likely, that record is on the external and is read as part of the mounting process when it's connected. While the process of putting each external on each Mac's Privacy list is a pain, it should only be necessary to do it once. Whether the Don't Index flag is Mac specific, so that Mac 1 doesn't want that external indexed but Mac 2 does, is another question.
I do think the Don't Index flag or file is separate from the partition's logical name because, when I erase the partition in preparation for a new backup clone, I don't change the name of the partition, and the name of the device to be cloned doesn't change either. Rather, it may simply be a Spotlight related file that gets erased along with everything else.
Fortunately, I don't have to worry about Spotlight; apart from the Privacy listing, I have all of the Search Results options unchecked, so there's very little to index on the boot partition. Spotlight can't be turned off altogether though because it interacts with the App Store regarding purchases and downloads. For finding things, I use EasyFind, which, while not able to find content in documents, looks inside of everything else, including Packages and hidden System files, and does it on demand without having to index anything. Another advantage of that is, by not tinkering with OS files, including those associated with Spotlight under the hood, when a new OS changes how things work, there's less risk of a deeply hidden self inflicted bug.

Can I disable trash for external drives?

Hello,
Is it possible to disable the Trash for external drives so that files from external drives are completey deleted automatically, or else moved to the trash on my internal hard drive? The problem that I am trying to solve is, for example, when I download pictures from my camera, if I want to make more space available on the camera, I have to first delete the pictures from the camera, and then empty my trash, since deleting the pictures from the camera only moves them to a hidden folder called ".Trash". I would prefer if I didn't have to empty the trash every time I wanted to free up room on my camera external hard drive.
Thanks very much,
Adrian
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.1)

It isn't without its risks, but another option may be to ⌘-drag the files to the hard drive, which will simulate a "move" by copying the files to the hard drive then deleting them from the external. If something goes wrong during the transfer, it may be difficult in some situations to determine which files were being copied at the time - ie. which ones were potentially corrupted. It might be ok as a cleanup procedure after the files have been imported normally, but then you end up sitting through the process of copying them to the hard drive a second time - you might as well just toss them in the "Trash". Also, if a large number of files is involved, just don't accidentally drop them on the "Desktop" because the "Finder" can't handle it. Obviously, I'm not a fan of the method, but it's there as an option...

Prevent Windows from mounting the external drive?

From some reason whenever I launch the add and remove control panel Windows starts accessing my external Firewire drive and it seems to keep it from loading the programs list, forcing me to unmount the drive and relaunch the control panel. The drive is just for Time Machine and I don't need access to it in Windows, is there a way to prevent Windows from mounting the drive. I'm using Macdrive so changing the format won't help.

Hi Brian,
usually I would propose to either pull the power plug of the external harddisk or the USB-/Firewire- connection before booting up into Window.
If this is a Firewire-connected harddisk you might have success with disableing the 'IEEE 1394 Host controller' in the Device Manager (Control Panel - System - Hardware).
Hope it helps
Stefan

[SOLVED] can't mount USB external drive since udev upgrade to systemd

At somepoint in time around the June 1 change from udev to systemd or the change from udisks to udisks2 something has changed the way my external USB drives auto-mount.
I have always just plugged them in and they show up in PacmanFM just fine. Now, they do show up but the NTFS drive is showing as read-only and another empty drive that I have reformatted using GParted to xfs, then ext2, and finally again using ext4 gives "Permission Denied" errors when I try to put a file on the drive. Happens no matter how I format it.
Did something change that I need to manually configure? Up to this point I relied on udev just kind of doing its thing - I never had to configure anything to get these drives to work properly.
Last edited by AyeCapn (2012-06-26 15:15:59)

Perhaps the cause of my issue might be relevant:
While the now deleted udev automount script from the Arch Wiki had worked for months without issue, approximately since the udev/systemd merger it became broken for NTFS partitions on USB devices.
It still worked with the classic initscripts, but with systemd it only resulted in "Transport endpoint is not connected" for the supposed mount point and ls reported lots of "?" for it.

Disable mounting of external drives in guest account

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