[nforcer]

I recently acquired an external firewire drive to use as a backup and storage solution. So far it works great, aside from from a rumbling noise it makes on the desk due to vibration (at times it can be horribly loud if it is vibrating just right). If I eject the volume, it powers down and the vibration stops. So I made an application that will unmount the volume at launch and quit, and I currently have this in all users' login items.

This method is "okay", but sure seems kludgy. The drive still automounts until the app launches on any user login (and in the case of other users, until the app is authenticated ughh), and the drive is always automounted after a restart. I am thinking that there has to be a better solution... a way to keep it permanently unmounted, but I am uncertain of what to do. I would like a software solution to this instead of a hardware solution, because I don't want to be turning it on and off several times a day. And a double click from a chair is so much nicer than having to get up and toggle a switch

Is there any way that I can prevent an external hard drive from mounting at any time unless I explicitly mount it? I searched all the usual sources... versiontracker, macosxhints, these forums, but came up empty handed.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[xtal]

There is an option in Finder prefs that says: "show these items on desktop." If you uncheck hard disks, will it prevent their being mounted?

[nforcer]

Originally posted by xtal:
There is an option in Finder prefs that says: "show these items on desktop." If you uncheck hard disks, will it prevent their being mounted?

No, that just controls the visibility of volumes on the desktop. If it actually unmounted the volumes, you wouldn't be able to use your comp at all, I believe.