Hard Drive Icon Changes Color

The icon for rmy exernal drive changes flashes from dull gray to a nice color every so often. Only for a few seconds at a time. This is on the OSx 6 desktop. I only use this external drive for backups. It does it even when I'm not accessing the drive for backup purposes. Why?
When I open Finder, the left panel shows this external drive in orange color and my internal drive shows in solid gray. None of them flash in different colors.
Will reboot - tha seems to cure all kinds of flakie things but still have to wonder: "Why"?
Thanks if you can help.

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Why can't my hard drive icon be altered?

With my G4 I was able to copy and paste a picture onto my hard drive icon, changing its appearance on the desk top. With my G5 and Tiger, I am no longer able to do this. Apple support was unaware of this issue. Is anyone else with Tiger and a G5 able to go to info and copy and paste a new icon for the drive? Is there anyone else having this problem with Tiger when a new icon cannot be copied?
Just a note: I am able to change my folder appearance by copying a picture in info. It is only the hard drive that does not respond.

Just to clarify: when you open the hard drive info window and paste, does the icon change there, but not on the desktop? Or will the icon not change in the info window either? If the latter, it might be worth temporarily (can't stress enough the temporary part...)changing the ownership rules. When you get the info window, go down to Ownership & Permissions, then the Details section and change owner from system to your name from the list (You'll be prompted to enter system password). Do the cut & paste, then re-set the owner to system. This has worked for me on stubborn system icons.
If the icon will change in the info window but not on the desktop, just have patience; sometimes it takes a couple restarts before tenacious icons change.
Good luck

How in the HECK can I change my Hard Drive icon??!??!!

I've tried searching these discussion forums for how to do this, but the question has always remained unanswered! Does ANYbody know how to use this? I'd buy applecare but I'm a student and can't afford it. Would somebody please figure out how to make it so that you can paste a new icon on top of the standard icon for 10.3.9? It's driving me crazy that after I copy the icon I want to use for my hard drive that I can't paste it on top.
And I've tried doing a permissions repair in Disk Utility.
400 MHz PowerPC G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

That's how other people do it, HVlaar; it's the standard procedure. Works fine for me. Are you logged into an admin account? Have you considered that changing your hard drive icon probably isn't an important thing to do anyway?

Change position of hard drive icon?

Is there any way to change the position of my hard drive icon? It currently sits in the right top corner of my screen but I'd like to move it down a bit. But each time I move it and put the computer to sleep, when it wakes up it's right back where it was before.

In the Finder, go to the View Menu, and click on Show View Options (Cmd-J). Uncheck the "Snap to grid" item. Then you should be able to re-arrange to your heart's content.

Won't allow me to change my hard drive icon

Hello anyone! Here's my problem...I've been using Mac since 1985 and this has always been how you did this and now it's not working, has something changed?
1. Copy icon, picture, photo
2. Click once on hard drive icon on desktop and choose Get Info
3. Click on hard drive icon in Get Info window
4. Paste
5. Voila!
The blue halo that usually appears around the icon in the Get Info window is not appearing anymore. I've tried unlocking the Owner and changing from System to me as user and that doesn't help. I've tried renaming the hard drive and no luck. Has anyone else had this issue and can it be resolved. I don't want Cookie Monster as my icon anymore! Thanks!

There are a number of possible problems:
1. If you use Preview to copy the pix you might not have actually gotten the picture onto the Clipboard, so there is nothing to paste. You can check this by either "Show Clipboard" from the Finder's Edit menu, or try pasting first onto a new folder. If it doesn't paste into the folder let us know. It could be that you haven't gotten the desired picture "active" in Preview--if, for instance, it is an icns file you need to select the 128x128 icon and then click in the actual picture part of Preview's window, then copy.
2. If your picture is indeed on the Clipboard and will paste onto a folder, but you can't paste onto the drive because the wee GetInfo icon won't highlight you've got a permissions problem. I've had luck changing the icon by TEMPORARILY giving Everyone read and write permissions to the drive, using GetInfo.
As a last resort you will have to use the Terminal, there are several different things you can do, of various levels of complexity.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

External hard drives suddenly changed to read only

Three of my external hard drives suddenly changed to read only. These hard drives have been working on my macbook pro for months. When I click on get info 'read only' shows up and there is no lock icon nor is there a window that shows name | permissions, also in disk utility the 'verify disk premissions', 'verify disk', 'repair disk', and 'repair disk premissions' buttons are ghosted and I can not select them. I have not made any changes to my computer and I have read many other posts and have not been able to find a solution.

About a hundred times with no luck. Some of my research is leading to Western Digital, there may be a problem with the drives' 'smartware' software. I've been using this drive for months and I never used the 'smartware', but I tried it anyway with no luck. I just remembered that four days ago I had this drive plugged this drive into an Iomega wireless storage device and it seemed to work fine. Now the wireless storage device can't find the drive at all. I just need to know if there is a way I can change the permissions back to read/write, otherwise I will have to buy another drive and transfer all the data to the new drive and re-formatt the wd drive.

External Hard drive Permissions changed to "read only"

I use a Seagate Slim Drive (500GB) on my Macbook Pro (Late 2012, Retina, 13"), to store movies and tv shows and whatnot. Last night, I was watching a movie and everything was fine. I ejected the drive after use and it stayed that way overnight. This morning, I tried to connect it, but the partition refuses to mount. I got a friend to help me run command prompt diagnostics using terminal, which revealed that the permissions had suddenly changed to "read only". I really need to access the data on this drive because some of the movies in there are part of an important project that could hopefully land me job. Any help is welcome.

1. Select the external hard drives icon
2. Right-click > Get Info (cmd + i)
3. Expand the Sharing & Permission column
4. Click on the lock at the bottom right
* You will be prompted for an administrator name and password *
5. Once unlocked change the permission for user, group & everyone to read & write
6. Click the little gear right below and select “Apply to enclosed items…”

Hard Drive Icon no longer in upper right corner?

I know this probably sounds silly and trivial but it's annoying to me and I was wondering if there is a fix for it. Last week, my Hard Drive icon, which normally sits at the top right hand corner of my screen shows up on the middle right underneath a couple other icons when I start up. I can then move the icon to the normal position but why did it suddenly change startup positions on my desktop? And how can I fix it so that it automatically shows up in the upper right corner after startup like it used to?

In the Finder menu bar, click on "View", then "Show View Options", then activate "Snap to grid". That should keep desktop icons fixed in position.
Why did the HD icon move from the upper right hand corner? Who knows, but it happens. Don't lose sleep over it.

Two hard drive icons on my desktop, would like to have only one...

Hello everyone, I recently got a PowerMac G5 (I think it's a 2.3 GHz). It came with a hard drive inserted 'Untitled', which came from my old 1.6 GHz G5. On the desktop though, I get two hard drive icons, my main start up drive called 'Untitled', and another one called 'Spare'. I was told that my G5 has only one drive inserted 'Untitled', so I'm trying to either get rid of 'Spare', or merge it somehow into 'Untitled'. Under the Volumes folder, I was not really able to get rid of it, is this something to do with Disk Utility?
BDAqua - under Get Info, when I was on Leopard, I tried changing a User Permissions category called 'Everybody' from Read Only to Read and Write. Upon restart two days later, Leopard would not start up (loads of writing on the screen, with the Mac power button, asking me to restart). To cut a long story, I am now back on Tiger lol (Leopard issues for another discussion lol), so now I dare not play with anything which says Read Only, especially when it's probably not even necessary. I am writing this from the library, so don't know what exactly it says in Get Info - User Permissions for either drive at the moment. If this is relevant, I can have a look later and post back, I'll also verify permissions in Disk Utility for both drives, but I think they are fine. Actually, when I was on Leopard, my 'Untitled' drive took ages to verify permissions, and always loads of writing appeared! Now that I'm on Tiger, the other day when I verified Disk Permissions, it was quick and fine!
Thank you
In the screen shots, 'Untitled' is model ST31, 'Spare' is model WDC

Hi BDAqua, sorry I should have just opened it in the first place! I don't know why that man told me there was only one hard drive inside, perhaps a misunderstanding.
It seems that there are actually two hard drives inside, one in A, and one in B (see photo)! So, if this is the case, I don't have a problem with the two hard drive icons.
I guess if a G5 shows two hard drives on the desktop, then there's two hard drives in the machine!
Thanks for helping anyway.

Hard drive icon

The hard drive icon that is displayed in the top right corner of my computer has always displayed Macintosh HD underneath it. However, today when I came home and sat down at my computer it now displays \\b\b\\ underneath it. Anyone know the reason why this may have happened? I've done a reboot of my system and still no changes....any other ideas?
Message was edited by: ballison1

ballison1,
It was renamed by some keyboard manipulation that you did not notice, or a cat or a rugrat. Just click on the icon and then the name, and simply rename it to Macintosh HD.
;~)

Gray X on hard drive icon

Hi, I just bought a G5 I Mac off eBay, It Is supposed to have Leopard installed. But it came with Tiger disk. When I turn it on a white screen comes with the Apple symbol and timer wheel, that is as far as it goes, just sits there spinning. When I start it up holding the options button down the screen has 3 icons, arrow circle hard drive icon with gray X , right arrow. There is a clock at the far left. I can not click on any of the icons, in a bit the screen changes back to the white screen and the timer wheel just sits there spinning. Thank You

It's been a while since I started up using the option button but I seem to remember I had to do something such as use the arrow keys to move between items and select the X - it was something not instinctive. If you're not using an Apple mouse and keyboard the computer might also not respond correctly.
Still, it's strange the computer won't immediately go for the only valid system. Unfortunately it could be a number of things and you'rll have to work your way through a list.
Bad PRAM battery? Especially with a computer of unknown use history. Bad PRAM can sometimes cause a computer to hang. Texas Mac Man's PRAM, battery, PMU tutorial - https://sites.google.com/site/macpram/mac-pram-nvram-cuda-pmu-battery-tutorial
Insert the Tiger disc and hold down C while starting. Does it boot to the disc? If so, we can try proceeding from there and it would also narow things down a bit. I would hesitate, though, to proceed to try to repair the internal drive with the Tiger disc because generally you shouldn't use an older OS to repair a drive with a newer OS.

Hard drive icon displaces

Hi Everyone,
My recent problem is everytime I restart the mini, hard drive icon appears at the centre of the desktop instead of its usual place. This started after I made some changes on the size of the desktop icons. Thanks...

Additionally, you could download the program Mac HelpMate:
http://www.machelpmate.com/
Run it.
Then, click on the lock in the bottom right, enter your system / administrator password.
Then, click on the "Clean" tab.
Then, choose remove .DS_Store files.
Then, click Go.
Now, see if that fixed your problem.
I hope this helps.
Let us know if you have other questions.
P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.

My External Seagate Hard drive just changed to read only

my External Seagate Hard drive just changed to read only on its own?
I went to get info and scrolled down to the Sharing and Permissions
But there is nothing there but a greyed out : You can only read
There are No boxes to check or uncheck, No options to change to read and write, No name of owner or ignore ownership box. NOTHING ELSE IS THERE
HELP!
I have recently upgraded to Mountain Lion and am having other problems as well

Click on the external HDD icon COMMAND+I. You should see a display such as this:
You should be logged on as the administrator. Click on the lock icon. It should open and allow you to make the required changes.
Ciao.

Mac hard drive icon

Mac hard drive icon is an ipod icon why is this so and how do I change it back?

Or try this:
Select the HD - and Get Info (Apple-I).
Click on the Icon in the Info Pane you just brought up.
Press Apple-X.
That should revert the icon to the default resource file .icns icon normally associated with that drive.

Hard Drive icon won't open and menu bar flashes off and on

All of a sudden, in the middle of the day, my eMac went haywire. I can launch apps and docs are one the desktop. But I cannot open the Hard Drive icon. If I double-click on it (or used Command-O from keyboard), the icon won't open. And when I attempt to open it, the Finder Menu Bar begins flashing off and on (vanishing, reappearing, vanishing) across the top of the screen. I haver rebooted, run disk utility to repair permissions, even booted from TechTools to run its diagnostics. But still no access to the Hard Drive icon. I logged out and logged in as a TEST user, and same thing happens even when logged in that way. Literally, this happened in an instant. One minute the eMac was fine, then this started. Anyone else seen this? -- david

If the problem exists in both your regular account and your Test account odds are that it is at the system level. You can try a Safe boot (hold down the shift key at startup) to see if there is a third party startup item or one of the optional Apple functions that is causing the problem. You could also boot from the installer disk and use the Disk Utility->Repair Disk function. If you have a utility such as Tiger Cache Cleaner which will do a deep cache clean you can also try that.
Francine
Schwieder

Hard Drive Icon Changes Color

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