Alias to Mount an External Drive

[riker29]

I can't get an alias to an external drive to mount the drive (if it is not mounted and assuming it is available over the firewire connection).

I have tried everything (yes, I know how to make an alias, LOL). I even tried making a symbolic link to the external volume, but if the drive is not mounted and I try to open the link, the Finder gives me the "Original ... cannot be found" warning.

Any ideas as to what is wrong?



More:

This USED to work. In fact I had a network drive (off of my Airport Extreme). On that drive I had a sparseimage bundle which was encrypted, and inside of THAT was an iTunes media folder. I could create an alias to the iTunes media folder, unmount the network drive, and when I opened the alias it would mount the drive, open the sparseimage (the password was saved in my keychain so I didn't have to enter it each time), and open the iTunes media folder!

This was really convenient since I keep my movies on the network drive, and everything else for iTunes is on my internal drive. So if I wanted to access the movies, I would just option-launch iTunes, and I had an alias to my network drive right there next to teh internal iTunes linrary, and all I had to do was open the alias, the drive would mount, the spareimage would open, the iTunes folder on it would open, and I could just launch iTunes quickly.

I had to replace that external (network) drive. I created a new drive with partitions just like the last one, and it won't work. In fact even with the drive locally connected (NOT over the network) it won't work.

The ONLY difference that I am aware of is that the new drive was created using Mt. Lion.

Maybe in Apple's efforts to turn my Mac into an iPhone, this was deemed as another extra, erroneous, "not needed" feature that just complicated things for average people, and they decide to remove it. Maybe that trend was due to Forstall's influence and I would to think that's why he was shown the door, but I would guess not.

[ganbustein]

Do you have permission to access the disk? Is it a share point?

Permission to access the disk or a folder on it is determined according to which user you logged in as when connecting to the server. That is, if you're user "joe" on machine "Alpha" and connected to machine "Beta" by logging in as "mary", permissions are determined by what "mary" can do. "joe"'s permissions are irrelevant. This is true even if "mary" and "joe" are spelled exactly the same.

In general, to mount a disk volume (as opposed to a folder on the disk), "mary" would have to be an admin on "Beta". Whether "joe" is an admin on "Alpha" is completely irrelevant. If "mary" is not an admin, try making your alias to a folder that "mary" has access to, rather than to the disk itself.

Or, make the disk a share point, and give "mary" access to it. That should work even if "mary" is not an admin. (System Preferences→Sharing→File Sharing, and add the disk to the list of Shared Folders. Add "mary" as a user of it.)

In any event, a symbolic link absolutely will not work here. Symbolic links lack the magic that makes aliases able to auto-locate and auto-open their targets. (A symbolic links can reach its target only if it's already mounted.)

[riker29]

Quote: Originally Posted by ganbustein Do you have permission to access the disk? Is it a share point?

Yes, and yes.

I just tried to go ahead and select the "ignore ownership" option, and it still does not work.

[regulus6633]

You mention a "firewire" connection. I think that's the problem. The alias definitely works on a network drive but I don't think a firewire connected drive works the same. Probably the firewire connection is not active and thus the computer has no way to find the disk. Normally when a firewire disk is disconnected you have to un-plug and then re-plug in the firewire cable to get it to be recognized. At least that's the way I remember firewire working.

[riker29]

Quote: Originally Posted by regulus6633 You mention a "firewire" connection. I think that's the problem. ... Normally when a firewire disk is disconnected you have to un-plug and then re-plug in the firewire cable to get it to be recognized. ...

That's the normal way of doing it. However if you unmount the volumes in the Finder, Disk Utility will show that it still "sees" the volumes. And then if you open an alias to the volume it should re-mount. But that's not happening now

[ganbustein]

Quote: Originally Posted by regulus6633 You mention a "firewire" connection. I think that's the problem. ... Normally when a firewire disk is disconnected you have to un-plug and then re-plug in the firewire cable to get it to be recognized. ...

Good catch!

Quote: Originally Posted by riker29 That's the normal way of doing it. However if you unmount the volumes in the Finder, Disk Utility will show that it still "sees" the volumes. And then if you open an alias to the volume it should re-mount. But that's not happening now

I don't remember that ever working. Resolving an alias will attempt to re-mount a network volume or a disk image, but I don't recall it ever working to re-mount a local volume. Even for a target on a CD/DVD/floppy, it'll ask for the disk by name, but still won't automatically mount it if it has been unmounted but not ejected.

To test, I tried it on MtLion and on Tiger, on both internal and FireWire drives. It couldn't find an unmounted volume even if the drive was still attached and even if other partitions on the same disk were still mounted.

When I want to re-mount a local volume, I usually open Disk Utility, select the partition, and click on the Mount button. For FireWire (or USB), I'll sometimes cycle power or unplug/replug, but of course those aren't viable options if other partitions on the same disk are still mounted, or if it's an internal drive.

[riker29]

Quote: Originally Posted by ganbustein I don't remember that ever working. ... To test, I tried it on MtLion and on Tiger, on both internal and FireWire drives. ... When I want to re-mount a local volume, I usually open Disk Utility, select the partition, and click on the Mount button. ...

You're right.

I could have sworn that this worked! (I must be over-worked or something, LOL). I know that it worked when mounting a network volume. I guess I assumed (or my brain's memory became corrupted somehow..) that since a network volume worked, then a local drive would certainly work. But I guess it doesn't.

(duh!)

FYI, this all spawned from a complex set of things I was trying to do that were not working, and attempting to debug them. It involves

1. encrypted volumes
2. The huge mess encrypted volumes create when viewed in Disk Utility with "show all partitions" enabled via the Debug menu. (FYI: The Debug menu is not enabled by default.)
3. Local vs. Network drives
4. Airport Extreme being able to see and mount a volume based upon how that particular volume may be formatted
5. Airport Extreme being able to see and mount a volume based upon how any volume on that physical disk may be formatted

It seems that there is some confusion with Apple as to how all of these related to one another. The volume-alias-mounting issue was an error on my part which seemed to have thrown off the investigation, but now with that eliminated as a factor, we can probably converge upon a solution based upon only the factors above.

I have an open ticket with Apple support right now. I got on the phone with a Level 2 Apple Tech yesterday and we ended up on the phone for over 90 minutes! He actually was going back-and-forth talking to Engineering.

I have to set up a test scenario toady to move further in figuring all of this out. To do this, I have to shuttle around about 2.5 TB of data. But the Apple Tech actually scheduled a time to call me back today to work on this, and Engineering is actively involved.