Why does my hard drive change names on my desktop randomly

[pennhogwild]

Have had my imac for about a year and just recently my hard drive changed from "c:" to "+++++". I changed it to read "hard drive" and then a few days later it changed again to "5+". Why is it doing this?

[DavidR91]

Generally, that's not a good sign. Random characters are usually indicative of random data - which points to some form of corruption (either of the file(s) which control the attributes of the drive, or of the drive itself). You get a similar effect, for example, on corrupt CD-ROMs, where the names of folders can appear as random strings of characters and symbols.

Use disk utility to verify the disk (and verify the permissions, although that's unlikely to be the cause of the problem)

[pennhogwild]

Ok, thanks for the response.

[Hot Snowboarder]

It could be accidental key strokes.

Unlikely, but it has happened to me before.

If your hard drive is selected on the desktop, then brush the enter key on the numpad.... you could accidently and easily rename it.

[mooblie]

My money's on your cat walking on the keyboard when you're not there.