[Uisce]

Hi all, I have a volumes issue.

I have a WinFS external hdd I connect to my OSX computer. Over the months, I've noticed that I am getting multiple Volumes on my computer that match the name of the external hdd, but that are incomplete. It looks like the computer for some reason couldn't find the external physical volume I wanted, so it created a new one locally and wrote the piece of info to it.

I want to get rid of these volumes, but want to check that its safe to rm-r them in a terminal shell.

Volume will be the name of my volume, and I have two internal HDDs. Basically, when I look at computer:/Volumes in Terminal, I have this:
volume, volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4, volume 5, volume\ 2, Mac HDD1, Mac HDD2.

The external hdd on my desktop just says volume. How do I clean up this mess?

Thanks,

[OreoCookie]

Are you sure that you use WinFS on your external hd? (It's an experimental sql-like database on top of NTFS (which is Windows' standard filesystem).)

I suppose some application tried to access your external harddrive (e. g. a downloading app). It then creates a path in /Volumes which sometimes appears in the Finder.

Just open /Volumes (in the Finder menu: Go To Folder > /Volumes) and check out how many subdirectories there are and if they match those ghost volumes' names.

[Uisce]

No, I meant NTFS... sorry, too many formats. Each repetitive volume directory pretty much has one tree in it, and it looks like it was created to write one data source when the actual volume was not available. I just want to be sure I can copy out the material and remove the ghost dir's without doing any damage or losing any data.

[OreoCookie]

Well, all the (potential) damage has already been done (e. g. writing incomplete files or so). Be sure not to use volumes for downloads or so when they aren't always available.

[TETENAL]

You can not write to NTFS volumes anyway.

[Uisce]

I seem to be able to write to NTFS - I was under a space constraint, so I started writing docs to the Windows NTFS HDD I have. This includes my iPhoto & iTunes Library. Now that I have a new HDD with a larger capacity, I'm moving all my stuff back to HFS+ Journaled HDDs (except iTunes, since I like syncing between my comps, but it seems I have redundant some info on these ghost volumes. After copying it out to actual volumes, I want to delete the ghosts since I figure it is taking up hdd space somewhere.

[OreoCookie]

Why don't you use iTunes Sharing to share your library to the other computer?

[Uisce]

Well, one's a laptop, one's a desktop; one's XP, one's OSX, one travels with me around the place, and one sits at my desk. To keep my library sync'd, its easiest for me to keep the library on a drive I can copy from for both OS's so I still have my library when I'm away from home. Thus, its on the Windows-formatted hdd.

Things will get easier once OSX/Intel computers are out and I'll finally be able to justify a Mac for work. Until then, its a mish mash.