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Unhide Library folder on external HDD

R

rstepa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 10, 2011
2
0
Hi,

Long story short; Lion corrupted my disk, so i'm moving back to SL. I'm going to restore my HDD back to the state before I installed Lion. However before doing so i'd like to recuperate all the "new" files i created while using Lion.

Some of these files are located in my library folder.

How do you unhide the library folder when it's located on an external HDD rather than in your Home folder.

Hope this question makes sense, if you guys need more details please let me know.
 
Last edited:
wrldwzrd89

wrldwzrd89

macrumors G5
Jun 6, 2003
12,110
77
Solon, OH
This is easy to do with the Terminal, no matter WHERE the ~/Library folder is located. There's a terminal command called chflags, which is what you need to use here. It takes 2 arguments: flag to set or unset, and the file/folder to perform the operation on. The flag you want is nohide. To get the folder name, drag and drop the parent folder of the Library folder you wish to unhide to the Terminal window (this could be the root of the external drive), then append /Library to the end of that path you get, removing the space Terminal inserts for you at the end.

To summarize, and give an example:
Let's say your external is called "External HDD", and the Library folder in question is located within a folder on that disk called "rstepa". In that case, the full command would be:
Code: 
chflags nohide /Volumes/External\ HDD/rstepa/Library
Also worth noting is that this method works on a stock Mac OS X installation - no additional software is required.
 
R

rstepa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 10, 2011
2
0
Thanks for a timely and clear explanation wrldwzrd89! :)

that thing you mention of dragging the folder in order to get it's path is a nice trick :)
 
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