Disk icon does not appear on Desktop, nor in Finder

Question

I have 4 disk drives:
2 internal
1 external (FireWire) divided into 2 partitions
Only 3 of 4 drive icons appear on my desktop or in the Finder.
I have this info from Terminal:
<pre>DavePowerMac1800:/ davebarnes$ ls -aol /Volumes
total 16
drwxrwxrwt 7 root admin - 238 Feb 22 17:34 .
drwxrwxr-t 39 root admin - 1428 Feb 22 17:34 ..
-rwx------ 1 davebarn admin - 82 Aug 18 2005 ._MARKETINGTACTIC;DAVE1833
drwxr-xr-x 19 davebarn davebarn - 748 Oct 3 21:57 Daves_280GB
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin - 1 Feb 22 17:34 Daves_80GB -> /
drwxr-xr-x 19 davebarn davebarn - 680 Jan 21 09:54 DavesGTech173GB
drwxrwxr-t 34 root admin - 1258 Feb 22 14:30 GTechBootable60GB</pre>
The missing icon belongs to DavesGTech173GB.
As a side note, Path Finder (from CocoaTech) has no trouble finding this drive.
Disk Utility finds the drive and returns this from Verify:
<pre>Verifying volume “DavesGTech173GB”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume DavesGTech173GB appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk
1 HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification</pre>
So, how do I get my icon back onto the desktop?
thanks,
dave

Answer 1

Not sure I have a "magic answer" but from what you've said, and the fact that it does open just fine with the "open" command, my guess is that the invisible bit for the drive has mysteriously been set. It is there, there is nothing wrong with it, it has mounted just fine. It is just invisible to the Finder. Don't remember seeing a volume with the invisible bit set before, but I have seen many other things, including one poor guy's Applications folder.
There are several ways to fix it, if that is indeed the case. The one I'm most familiar with involves using the Terminal, and the Developer Tools GetFileInfo and SetFile commands. If you don't have them, you can download them here:
http://homepage.mac.com/francines/.Public/setgetfile.zip
Unzip and either put the two commands somewhere in your PATH or, if you don't know how to do that, you can just drag and drop the command into the Terminal. So if you did that, you would do something like this:
DavePowerMac1800:/ davebarnes$ /Users/davebarnes/Desktop/setgetfile/GetFileInfo /Volumes/DavesGTech173GB/
Hit return and see what the Terminal reports. I have the commands in my PATH, so when I run the command on a partition I have named OXey, I get this:
-bash:~francine$ GetFileInfo /Volumes/OXey/
directory: "/Volumes/OXey/"
attributes: aVbstClinmed
created: 08/05/2006 20:08:50
modified: 02/17/2007 12:00:10
The part you are interested in is the attributes. You'll see the second one is an upper case "V"--meaning it is invisible (I made it invisible for the purposes of this demonstration). To bring it back into view you use the SetFile command, with the attribute option and a lower case "v" to unset the invisible bit:
-bash:~francine$ SetFile -a v /Volumes/OXey/
or yours would be something like this (again presuming SetFile isn't in your PATH, but was downloaded and unzipped on the Desktop):
DavePowerMac1800:/ davebarnes$ /Users/davebarnes/Desktop/setgetfile/SetFile -a v /Volumes/DavesGTech173GB/
You'll need to relaunch the Finder or log out and back in to see the change.
Of course, if the invisible bit hasn't been set, and GetFileInfo shows the normal lower case v to start with, then this definitely is not the magic answer!
Francine
Francine
Schwieder