Another External HD question

[someguy]

Recently, I was able to create two partitions in different formats with the help of a few MR members. Everything is working great with that, but everytime I plug in or turn on my external drive, both volumes automatically mount. One volume is used to backup the entire HD in my PowerBook, so I only need access to that volume once or twice a month when I do my full backups.

Usually when I plug in my drive, I open Disk Utility and unmount the backup volume (because right-clicking it's desktop icon and selecting "Eject" unmounts all volumes on that drive), so I was wondering if there is a way to make it so only the storage volume I created mounts when I plug in the drive? This way when I actually need to use to backup volume, I can mount it in Disk Utility.

Not a huge deal, but I figured it was worth asking.

 

[mad jew]

This hint might help.

 

[someguy]

This hint might help.

Good find! I'll try that out and let you know how it works.

 

[mad jew]

Good luck mate. It's not the easiest thing to do. I screwed it up royally, the first time I tried it.

 

[someguy]

Good luck mate. It's not the easiest thing to do. I screwed it up royally, the first time I tried it.

Yeah, it looks rather intimidating. Any tips on avoiding disasters you learned about the hard way?

 

[mad jew]

Copy & paste the large numbers. Check and recheck them to make sure you actually copied them because I think the first time I did it, I failed to copy one of them and ended up pasting it in twice without noticing. At least, that's what I think I did.

 

[someguy]

Oh, that wasn't so bad. It looks a lot harder than it is.

I almost made one mistake, though. Between the UUID and the other variables (is that the right term?), there are TWO spaces. I didn't notice that the first time, but realized it before saving my fstab file.

Worked like a charm. Thanks!

 

[mad jew]

Fantastic! You're one up on me, you got it working first time. Nice one.

 

[someguy]

Call it beginner's luck.

It helps, too, if you skip over all the technical mumbo-jumbo and get to the part about what to do. Less confusing that way.

 

[mad jew]

Oh yeah, totally agree. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to this sort of thing.

 

[someguy]

Although you never see it this way, I prefer instructions to be put together as follows:

1. Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/)
2. Type "sudo pico /etc/fstab" w/o quotes.
3. Press Enter.

I suppose a certain level of difficulty created by writing instructions that require a degree of prior knowledge and/or problem solving skills helps keep those that shouldn't be playing with things that could get them into trouble from doing so.

Either that, or it just helps ensure their utter failure.

 

[mad jew]

Or it makes the poster sound smarter...

Yeah, I think there's definitely some merit to making the instructions appear intimidating, especially considering what can happen if things go wrong.

 

[someguy]

That's like explaining to someone the difference between Parallel and Serial ATA when helping them use Spotlight to search their hard drive for a file. Sure it is distantly related to what is being discussed, but how is knowing this info going to help me find that picture of my dog chasing its tail?

Is it possible to, in an effort to sound knowledgable, come off as completely stupid?

 

[mad jew]

jsw reckons I've done it about 22,000 times.

 

[someguy]

Does that include any instances taking place in this thread?

 

[mad jew]

Eight of them. Apparently.

 

[someguy]

Thanks again for the help. I'm off to get some sleep. I honestly think I surf these forums more than I work. Damn you, arn.