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Renaming Primary HD in Lion
- Thread starter nüb
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Thats funny, it works on mine. I opened Finder, and in the sidebar i selected my Lion HD, right click, Get Info, and under Name and Extension I can alter its name.
It's really not a good idea to rename your main drive...if you ever share any project files of any sort with someone it can seriously break dependancies. I had a person I shared an edit with and everything was broken because he renamed the machd.
I just realized that. Derp.
Question remains, any way to change this without deleting the user? Oddly, my "User Name" in my "Users & Groups" is different than the "Home User."
You can change the name, or path of your Home folder.
Here are Apples instructions. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428
However, it is EXTREMELY UNADVISABLE to do so. Lots of problems will arise.
Here are Apples instructions. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428
However, it is EXTREMELY UNADVISABLE to do so. Lots of problems will arise.
Thanks for the link. So, at the moment the name next to my little "Home Folder" is different than my "User." I read that it says they "should match."
"The account name can contain up to 255 lowercase characters with no spaces. This is the name used to create a user's home directory (also known as the user's Home or Home folder) in the Users folder."
At the moment the Home Directory is different than the Primary User (me). I was just wanting to change the Home Directory name, but if it's problematic, maybe it's not worth it? Perhaps I can dump everything onto a third HD and wipe this main HD. Hmmmm.....
I recently changed it from Macintosh HD to Macintosh SSD. Is it gonna cause any problems? Nothing happened as far as I can tell
Aloha everyone,
I've never had any issues when renaming my computers before. Actually, you may have issues if you don't. By default, your HDD is called "Macintosh Disc" or something generic like that. Setting a different name allows for easier identification of specific computers. If you would like to share files over your home/work network, you can also go to
System Preferences -> Sharing
and click in the File Sharing checkbox to enable File Sharing. To better identify other computers/servers on your home/work network, you can use the text field in the top of that pane to change the name of your computer on the network. Then, when you press:
Shift-Cmd-K
you should see an icon for the other computers/servers on your home/work network, with the names specified in the Sharing pane.
With respect to the icon used, you'll need an .rsrc icon file for hard drives. Icons for hard drives are in a different format than those used for apps (.rsrc is for hard drives and .icns is for apps, if you want to change them once they've been installed). My former workflow was to use Icon Composer (installed if/when Xcode is installed - it's in /Developer/Applications/Utilities), then run the resulting .icns file through Icns2Rsrc.app. Unfortunately, Icns2Rsrc.app is a PPC program, and I have yet to find a suitable replacement. Fortunately for me, I have a late 2006 20" iMac that can not be upgraded to Lion (it only had a Core Duo CPU), so I can run Icns2Rsrc on that computer.
Here are the steps to change your hard drive icon. First right-click and copy the desired .rsrc icon file. Next, locate your hard drive in either the Finder or on your desktop, right-click and select Get Info. In the top-left of the Get Info window is the current icon being used for your hard drive. Now, click on that icon and you'll see a blue background around the icon. From the Finder menu in the menubar, select Edit -> Paste and you should see the icon change, both in the top left corner and in the Preview section of the Get Info window.
EDIT: It is possible to choose different names for your computer and primary hard drive, but I would advise against that, as it will probably cause too much confusion. Of course, if you develop a naming convention taking this into consideration, feel free to name differently.
I've never had any issues when renaming my computers before. Actually, you may have issues if you don't. By default, your HDD is called "Macintosh Disc" or something generic like that. Setting a different name allows for easier identification of specific computers. If you would like to share files over your home/work network, you can also go to
System Preferences -> Sharing
and click in the File Sharing checkbox to enable File Sharing. To better identify other computers/servers on your home/work network, you can use the text field in the top of that pane to change the name of your computer on the network. Then, when you press:
Shift-Cmd-K
you should see an icon for the other computers/servers on your home/work network, with the names specified in the Sharing pane.
With respect to the icon used, you'll need an .rsrc icon file for hard drives. Icons for hard drives are in a different format than those used for apps (.rsrc is for hard drives and .icns is for apps, if you want to change them once they've been installed). My former workflow was to use Icon Composer (installed if/when Xcode is installed - it's in /Developer/Applications/Utilities), then run the resulting .icns file through Icns2Rsrc.app. Unfortunately, Icns2Rsrc.app is a PPC program, and I have yet to find a suitable replacement. Fortunately for me, I have a late 2006 20" iMac that can not be upgraded to Lion (it only had a Core Duo CPU), so I can run Icns2Rsrc on that computer.
Here are the steps to change your hard drive icon. First right-click and copy the desired .rsrc icon file. Next, locate your hard drive in either the Finder or on your desktop, right-click and select Get Info. In the top-left of the Get Info window is the current icon being used for your hard drive. Now, click on that icon and you'll see a blue background around the icon. From the Finder menu in the menubar, select Edit -> Paste and you should see the icon change, both in the top left corner and in the Preview section of the Get Info window.
EDIT: It is possible to choose different names for your computer and primary hard drive, but I would advise against that, as it will probably cause too much confusion. Of course, if you develop a naming convention taking this into consideration, feel free to name differently.
If you cant live with it, then thats the best way to change it.
Presuming you changed it via the Get Info method, you will have no problems
I just clicked on the desktop icon and replaced HD with SSD
No problem then
Was able to get to it...still getting used to some of the subtleties of Lion.
Now, my "User" name at "Home" cannot be changed, is that correct?
The name that appears in your finder window can't be changed, no. It's associated with your account, and it points the computer to where on the HD your account info (documents and such) is stored. If you change it, then the next time you reboot, the computer will create a new user folder with the name of the old one and boot in to that, because your old folder is no longer associated with your account. Trust me, I tried it once without realizing what would happen, and had a little panic attack when I logged in, and it booted me in to a default account.
Thanks! Yeah, Lion is showing in the top menu a different (old user name) than what my ACTUAL user name is. So it's just a bit weird. I wanted to try and streamline the names. Pity...
This Apple Support Article may help. I've never had to do it though. Basically you have to create a new account in System Preferences and migrate to it.