Our work image is pretty locked down so one of my colleagues has partitioned the mac in to 2 with one being the work image and the 2nd being a standard OS install. How ever when he boots from the work one the 2nd is still visible. he can unmount the drive but wants to know if there is a way to do it permanently?

They're being far too geeky if you ask me. I'm going to wipe mine and put the non work image on it because it's so slow!

Carolyn

I have, finally, moved this to the Mac Software forum. I'm not sure it fitted properly into PC software or the Open Source forums.

Assuming it's anything like what I know, is there not a partition manager where you can stop the partition being mounted in the first place?

You could always create an alias to the one you want visible in the Finder, then use Finder preferences to disable showing hard drives on both the desktop and in the side bar.You can then simply double-click the alias to open that volume.

I'm pretty sure you can also write an AppleScript to unmount that volume, which if saved as a Run-only Application in Script Editor and added as a log-in item, would automatically unmount that drive when you startup. I'll have to have a dig in my old scripts folder sometime... watch this space!

You could certainly deny access to a different user, but as to not having it mount, probably some command line trickery, but I wouldn't know where to start on that!

OK, think this should work. Open Script Editor and copy and paste this into a new window...


Obviously, replace Name-of-volume with the actual volume name as shown in the Finder - keep the quotes around it though.

Now, File > Save as - select the following options...



And save it somewhere that it's not going to be deleted (Applications or Documents folder?), then add it as a Login Item in System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items

It may appear briefly when the Finder loads in, but should be unmounted as soon as the script runs.Unless there are a lot of login items, that should be almost immediately.

That's a nice solution.

I have never been in Open Source so don't know how that happened but thanks anyway.

Thanks all for your replies I have passed it on.

Carolyn

The more correct way to do this would be to do the following (tested on 10.6.7):
Open up Disk Utility
Select the volume on the left and get info
Note the disk identifier (should be something like disk1s1)
Open Terminal and do the following:

Enter the following into the text editor:

ctrl+o will save the file, ctrl+x will exit.
Reboot and you're done! The only odd thing is that launching Disk Utility will automount the volume again...

That's pretty much what I was thinking.

*Nix ubiquity rocks!

The bigger question is, if the work image is locked down so much, is it a dismissable offence to re-partition the drive and install a second operating system?

He should be careful and check that, before doing the install!

We're IT Dave, we don't have to use the images as long as we can do our jobs.

I also use a variation of my earlier AppleScript to mount multiple volumes on startup - I found with more than one or two volumes added as log-in items, they would sometimes fail to mount, or hang the Finder while it was trying to mount them from different sources. With this AppleScript, you can add as many volumes as you want, all with different login names and passwords. The key is to use static IP addresses on your network, otherwise the script doesn't know where the volumes are located. But, assuming static IP addresses are used, fire up Script Editor and use a script in this format...



You can repeat this as many times as you like. Replace username with the login name you use to connect to that server, replace password with the password associated with your login name, replace 192.168.1.2 with the real IP address of the Mac/PC and finally replace Name-of-volume with the actual title of the volume as it appears when mounted in your Finder.

So, for example, if I connect to a Mac's volume called Big Disk at an IP address on the network of 192.168.1.34 using a username of Joe Bloggs and a password of Anything, then the script would be...



As before, once compiled, save the script as an Application format, using the "Run only" option, save it somewhere safe where it's not going to get trashed and add this script app to the Login Items in System Preferences > Accounts. It works much better than having individual servers added as Login Items, especially if you have, say 5 or 6 network volumes to mount on a daily basis.

To connect to a Windows PC using this type of script, I think you can replace afp with smb (although I've not tried this out yet!). So, that would be...