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Temporary Volume Appearing with Airport Extreme/Time Machine Backup

fivepoint

fivepoint

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 28, 2007
1,175
7
IOWA
Just last night I got my Airport Extreme and 1GB MyBook setup for wireless backups of my 750gb iMac. I finally got everything working fine, except for one thing... I get a mysterious generic white volume which pops up every time the backups occur. Here is a photo below:

2778064280_1410b44d29_o.png


The blue drive called "lucky" is my backup drive, and the random appearing white drive below it is the drive in question. When it's on the screen, it's called "backup of soandso's iMac" It appears while the backup is going on, and disappears as soon as it's done.

I'd really like to get rid of this if possible. It's kind of annoying to have random drives popping to and from my Desktop while I'm trying to get work done. Any help or enlightenment you can provide would be most useful.
 
If anyone could at least tell me if this is a "normal occurrence" that would be helpful. Maybe it's supposed to do this?
 
fivepoint said:
If anyone could at least tell me if this is a "normal occurrence" that would be helpful. Maybe it's supposed to do this?
Click to expand...

yeah I get this. Although I don't use an AEBS, I use my Macbook Pro as a Time machine server to my macbook air to back it up wirelessly (my mbp is basically a static machine).
 
I only get the second one because it backs up to a disk image, which is what the white one is. It only shows up when backing up or opening time machine. I changed the icon of the drive to the normal backup icon, but it works almost flawlessly. I don't know why you always have a first icon, but I do not, and the white one only comes up when backing up or searching the backups. Attached is a picture of my two drives-the disk image has a changed icon to the real icon, not the white one.
 

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txhockey9404 said:
I only get the second one because it backs up to a disk image, which is what the white one is. It only shows up when backing up or opening time machine. I changed the icon of the drive to the normal backup icon, but it works almost flawlessly. I don't know why you always have a first icon, but I do not, and the white one only comes up when backing up or searching the backups. Attached is a picture of my two drives-the disk image has a changed icon to the real icon, not the white one.
Click to expand...

Ok, let me see if I got this straight... I got a little lost with the "second one" "first one" talk.


  • You have 1 HD icon normal on your desktop. The Macintosh HD icon. When no TM backup is in progress, that is the only drive on your desktop.
  • When a TM backup is started, a second drive appeared. The drive was white, which you changed to the Time Machine Drive icon.
  • Now, you only have 1 icon (Macintosh HD) normally, and the 2nd icon (time machine drive icon) only appears when the backup is taking place.


Ok, if this is the case... then maybe my problem is that I drug my mounted "lucky" drive to the login items tab in the accounts section of System Preferences. Because of that, the drive 'mounts' every time the machine is started. Hence the 3rd drive.

So... if I take that drive out of the login items folder, there should be no second drive icon on the desktop unless a backup is taking place, correct? And I can change the icon if I want to so that it is not just a generic white drive.

Ok, that makes sense I guess. It really doesn't operate just like a locally connected drive though, like I had hoped.

Is this how everybody else's works? Only the main Macintosh HD drive showing unless a backup is taking place, then you have 2 drives showing.
 
fivepoint said:
Ok, let me see if I got this straight... I got a little lost with the "second one" "first one" talk.


  • You have 1 HD icon normal on your desktop. The Macintosh HD icon. When no TM backup is in progress, that is the only drive on your desktop.
  • When a TM backup is started, a second drive appeared. The drive was white, which you changed to the Time Machine Drive icon.
  • Now, you only have 1 icon (Macintosh HD) normally, and the 2nd icon (time machine drive icon) only appears when the backup is taking place.


Ok, if this is the case... then maybe my problem is that I drug my mounted "lucky" drive to the login items tab in the accounts section of System Preferences. Because of that, the drive 'mounts' every time the machine is started. Hence the 3rd drive.

So... if I take that drive out of the login items folder, there should be no second drive icon on the desktop unless a backup is taking place, correct? And I can change the icon if I want to so that it is not just a generic white drive.

Ok, that makes sense I guess. It really doesn't operate just like a locally connected drive though, like I had hoped.

Is this how everybody else's works? Only the main Macintosh HD drive showing unless a backup is taking place, then you have 2 drives showing.
Click to expand...
I have a disk attached to my AEBS that is used for Time Machine backups. I have that drive in my login items, so it appears on the desktop ( think you can enable or disable this desktop icon in Finder preferences, but I'm not sure). When the TM backup starts, I also get the white disk image icon on my desktop as well. This is all normal and expected.

As far as removing it from the login items, I think TM will then fail because it can't find the volume that contains the spasebundle needed for the backup. However, Apple may have fixed this (automount wasn't working last I knew).

No, TM does not work the same with networked volumes as it does with a directly-connected volume. That was a surprise to a lot of people when TM first came out.
 
danny,
Thank you very much for responding... seems like my "non-issue" is solved! I don't like the fact that I can't make it go away, but if that's the way it is, then I'll deal with it.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.
 
fivepoint said:
danny,
Thank you very much for responding... seems like my "non-issue" is solved! I don't like the fact that I can't make it go away, but if that's the way it is, then I'll deal with it.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.
Click to expand...
You're quite welcome! Glad to be of some help.
 
Are you using the external drive for anything other than Time Machine?

If not, you can eject this volume (as long as the white one isn't mounted). I have a very similar setup, and I only see the green icon when I mount the external drive for non time-machine use.

Normally I see only my grey/silver Internal drive icon, an the White Icon popup and goes away when the backups happen.

I know you were concerned about the white icon, and I don't think there is anything you can do about that one - it is going to come and go with each backup.

The green one however does not need to be there, unless you are using the drive for more than just time machine...
 
aross99 said:
Are you using the external drive for anything other than Time Machine?

If not, you can eject this volume (as long as the white one isn't mounted). I have a very similar setup, and I only see the green icon when I mount the external drive for non time-machine use.

Normally I see only my grey/silver Internal drive icon, an the White Icon popup and goes away when the backups happen.

I know you were concerned about the white icon, and I don't think there is anything you can do about that one - it is going to come and go with each backup.

The green one however does not need to be there, unless you are using the drive for more than just time machine...
Click to expand...

I use it ONLY for Time Machine... so this should work for me! Thanks! I also want to know the answer to your question just above this one about changing the icon. Normally it would be as simple as copy/paste inside of 'get info' but if it is a appearing/disappearing drive I'm not sure if the same rules apply. I'll try it tonight if no one posts an answer by then.
 
fivepoint said:
danny,
Thank you very much for responding... seems like my "non-issue" is solved! I don't like the fact that I can't make it go away, but if that's the way it is, then I'll deal with it.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.
Click to expand...

If you want the drive to mount but not show on your desktop, you can go into finder's preferences, under general, and uncheck connected servers. This way, the drive will not show on your desktop, and only the backup image will appear when you are backing up or reading a backup
 
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