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Matthew Attoe · Feb 25, 2005, 07:06 PM

Hi,

I just got my new G5 and after booting it up and following Apples pre-installed set-up routine, my HD is called Macintosh HD.

What I;d like to know is - if I click in the HD name and change it to, oh, let's say, Matthew's G5, is this going to cause me ANY problems at all, or am i good to go?

Thanks,

Matthew

discotronic · Feb 25, 2005, 07:08 PM

Originally posted by Matthew Attoe:
Hi,

I just got my new G5 and after booting it up and following Apples pre-installed set-up routine, my HD is called Macintosh HD.

What I;d like to know is - if I click in the HD name and change it to, oh, let's say, Matthew's G5, is this going to cause me ANY problems at all, or am i good to go?

Thanks,

Matthew

Go for it. You won't run into any problems if you do.

Chuckit · Feb 25, 2005, 07:16 PM

I never leave a hard drive as "Macintosh HD" and it's never given me any trouble.

Devin Lane · Feb 25, 2005, 08:41 PM

If you're thinking it would cause path problems like OS 9, rest assured -- the volume system is completely different in OS X.

In OS 9, the root of your path would be the HD name. In OS X, the root path is "/". /Applications represents the Applications folder in the root directory of your boot drive. Changing the name has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the path.

CharlesS · Feb 25, 2005, 09:15 PM

In general, on the Mac you can feel free to move and rename things without causing problems (with a few exceptions, of course, such as system files and stuff that belongs in the Library folders).

So, feel free to call your hard drive whatever you like.

Another neat thing to do is to paste a custom icon onto it. You can get lots of cool icons at http://www.xicons.com or on various other sites on the Web, or you can just copy any picture and it will become an icon. Just Get Info on the hard drive, click its icon in the Info window, and paste any icon or picture.

Just one of those little things you can do to customize your Mac and make it "yours".

Matthew Attoe · Feb 26, 2005, 02:55 AM

Thank you very much for the information.

I have now successfully renamed my hard drive

Cheers

Matthew

Ω · Feb 26, 2005, 04:58 AM

I have heard of instances where badly written apps can go looking for the volume Macintosh HD and will not install etc.

Though if you are installing rubbish that badly coded then it is probably best left uninstalled in the first place.

Angus_D · Feb 26, 2005, 05:47 AM

Originally posted by Devin Lane:
If you're thinking it would cause path problems like OS 9, rest assured -- the volume system is completely different in OS X.

Odd, never seen it cause any problems in OS 9, since nobody was ever supposed to use paths.

SMacTech · Feb 26, 2005, 07:21 AM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Odd, never seen it cause any problems in OS 9, since nobody was ever supposed to use paths.

Even if you did use a path, the programmer can easily obtain the HD name in OS 9. I have seen several problems over the years as a result of someone changing the name. Not in OS X however.

As _?_ noted, if such were the case you are probably better off without there software.

Big Mac · Feb 26, 2005, 10:46 AM

I never saw a problem with paths in the classic Mac OS, since developers were pretty smart about not using hard paths. On the other hand, some early OS X applications did use hard paths for core functions - even some Apple apps. In any event, renaming your drives has always been safe and permitted (except for certain cases such as when drives are shared, and in that case renaming is not permitted by the OS). Remember, the Mac is intelligently designed; unless you get a warning when performing an operation, it's safe to do it.

SMacTech · Feb 26, 2005, 12:24 PM

Originally posted by Big Mac:
I never saw a problem with paths in the classic Mac OS, since developers were pretty smart about not using hard paths.

Feel fortunate that you didn't. But unlike you say, these were not smart programmers. But this was a long time ago when I had to admin 50 or so Macs and the software was the only solution to our needs.

Remember the bug Apple had, where certain characters in the HD name caused bad things to happen? Wasn't it iTunes?

awaspaas · Feb 26, 2005, 12:37 PM

That was spaces in hard drive names that made the iTunes installer erase drives, IIRC. Man that was a nasty trick.

I've run into a few Classic apps that don't like the HD renamed. Beilstein Crossfire is one, but that's the least of my gripes with that app.

Never had a problem with an OS X app.

Superchicken · Feb 26, 2005, 06:31 PM

I've NEVER had a problem renaming the HD icon... the only problems I ever had were from OS X not allowing me to rename my digital camera... that was it.

Calli46 · Feb 26, 2005, 11:39 PM

Some caracters may cause havoc with the file system and the OS. So, better NOT use any of them in the drive's name. For one, I won't dare to try those caracters.

Now to name a few : </> like in My/Big/Drive
and <.> like in .
and <-> like in -MyDrive

Other misbehaving caracters you know of ?

CharlesS · 01:30 AM

Originally posted by Calli46:
</> like in My/Big/Drive

On OS X, not a problem. The HFS+ path delimiter is :, not /, and in Cocoa and the BSD layer, where / is the path delimiter, / in filename will just appear as a : and everything's fine.

Putting a : in a filename, however, is a no-no. Fortunately, the system won't let you do it (except in Cocoa and the BSD layer, but what will really happen is it will put a / there where you typed a :).

and <.> like in .
and <-> like in -MyDrive

Huh? These are fine to have in a filename. I don't get where you get that these are bad, especially . which will be in any filename that has an extension.

edit: forgot to disable smilies!

Chuckit · Feb 27, 2005, 01:06 AM

The only character I've ever known to cause problems is space, because some shell scripts don't deal with it properly, but that doesn't affect the boot drive, which is mounted at / rather than /Volumes/<Drive's name>. Period and hyphen have no special meaning to the shell, so I don't know what problems they would cause (except that you couldn't create a file named just a period, because there's always a pseudodirectory by that name).

chris v · Feb 27, 2005, 07:40 AM

When I first upgraded from 9 to 10, I thought I'd lost my Files partition, since I'd named it ".Files" under OS 9 simply so it would sort to the top alphabetically. I recall having a short freak-out until I thought about non-standard characters.

I've also had the occasional open/save dialog get lost after renaming drives, but that's just a lingering prefs issue.

Suitcase is also dumb in that it looks for your fonts that you've added to Suitcase sets on absolute paths, and if you re-name the drive with the fonts on it, it'll lose them and you'll have to start over. (This might not be true in Suticase XI but I've had it happen before)

powermacj7 · Feb 27, 2005, 08:06 AM

Change the icon too. The default Macintosh HD icon is ugly. I copied the icon from the system folder for the finder, and changed it immediately. LOL

CharlesS · Feb 27, 2005, 10:06 AM

Originally posted by chris v:
When I first upgraded from 9 to 10, I thought I'd lost my Files partition, since I'd named it ".Files" under OS 9 simply so it would sort to the top alphabetically. I recall having a short freak-out until I thought about non-standard characters.

Okay, you've got a point there, but that doesn't mean you should never put a period in a filename - it just means that you should start a file's name with a period if you don't want it invisible (which most OS X apps won't let you do anyway). Having a period anywhere else in the filename is fine, and in fact, necessary if you want your filename to have an extension!

Big Mac · Feb 27, 2005, 10:10 AM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Huh? These are fine to have in a filename. I don't get where you get that these are bad, especially . which will be in any filename that has an extension.

I think he meant a dot is bad when it's in the front of the filename, or if the filename is only a dot. I don't know what he meant by the hyphen, though.

Chuckit · Feb 27, 2005, 04:40 PM

Originally posted by chris v:
When I first upgraded from 9 to 10, I thought I'd lost my Files partition, since I'd named it ".Files" under OS 9 simply so it would sort to the top alphabetically. I recall having a short freak-out until I thought about non-standard characters.

Finder in OS X wouldn't let you give it that name, though. It tells you (somewhat incorrectly) that names beginning with a dot are reserved by the system.

Big Mac · Feb 27, 2005, 05:34 PM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
Finder in OS X wouldn't let you give it that name, though. It tells you (somewhat incorrectly) that names beginning with a dot are reserved by the system.

Correct, but the folder had a dot prefix from OS 9, so when he upgraded to OS X it was invisible.

chris v · Feb 27, 2005, 06:15 PM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Okay, you've got a point there, but that doesn't mean you should never put a period in a filename - it just means that you should start a file's name with a period if you don't want it invisible (which most OS X apps won't let you do anyway). Having a period anywhere else in the filename is fine, and in fact, necessary if you want your filename to have an extension!

Oh, I know, it was just an anecdote. The first thing I did was boot back into 9 and noticed quite a few things which were invisible in 10 that had periods in front of them. I put 2 and 2 together pretty quickly. After the iTunes installer fiasco (Yes, I was one of the L337 dummies) I've shied away from even putting spaces in HD names, but I'm sure that's overkill, since all Macs ship with a space in the HD name. Just precautionary in case some sleep-deprived coder at Apple pulls a re-enactment.

Chuckit · Feb 27, 2005, 06:26 PM

Originally posted by chris v:
After the iTunes installer fiasco (Yes, I was one of the L337 dummies) I've shied away from even putting spaces in HD names, but I'm sure that's overkill, since all Macs ship with a space in the HD name. Just precautionary in case some sleep-deprived coder at Apple pulls a re-enactment.

It doesn't make a difference for the boot drive. Shell scripts don't reference it by name �\ they call it "/". Other drives are /Volumes/<drive name>, so that if there's a space in the name, the space shows up in the file system.

philm · Feb 28, 2005, 07:09 AM

Originally posted by powermacj7:
Change the icon too. The default Macintosh HD icon is ugly. I copied the icon from the system folder for the finder, and changed it immediately. LOL

This has always been a bizarre thing. It seems to me that Apple work so hard to remove the user from direct contact with ugly computer things - the beautiful OS (rather than a nasty command line) and curvy, sexy hardware (rather than a beige box). But the hard disk icon is, well, a hard disk picture. Nasty.

chris v · Feb 28, 2005, 07:13 AM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
It doesn't make a difference for the boot drive. Shell scripts don't reference it by name ?\ they call it "/". Other drives are /Volumes/<drive name>, so that if there's a space in the name, the space shows up in the file system.

Interesting. Well, I feel more justified now, as I have 3 non-boot partitions.