Mounting a local folder as (fake) drive?

[Nielsh]

Hi all,
Allow me to sketch my situation.

I have two drives; one for OSX, and one with all my Sound Libraries.
Now, I have created enough space on my OSX drive to transfer all files on the Sound Libraries to my OSX drive, so I can use the former Sound Libraries drive for other purposes.

Now, since all my applications are used to the Sound Libraries being on the drive "Sound Libraries", and I'm moving them now to a dedicated folder in the root directory of my OSX drive, is there a way to create some kind of alias to this folder in the /Volumes/ directory, as if it were a real volume?

This way I wouldn't have to reconfigure all of my applications.

Thank you so much in advance!

Niels

 

[Bomb Bloke]

I'd create a symlink, using the following terminal command:

ln -s <folderPath> /Volumes/<fakeDriveName>

Truth be told, you could just put your folder directly into /Volumes. Don't, though - it's likely to confuse someone else horribly later down the line, when they try to work out where the phantom drive is coming from.

 

[Nielsh]

I'd create a symlink, using the following terminal command:

ln -s <folderPath> /Volumes/<fakeDriveName>

Truth be told, you could just put your folder directly into /Volumes. Don't, though - it's likely to confuse someone else horribly later down the line, when they try to work out where the phantom drive is coming from.

Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, this doesn't work.
The applications that use the sound libraries now ask me for the installation directory, guess they can't be tricked with an alias.
So now I could try moving the actual folder to the Volumes directory, but doesn't this directory get wiped on a reboot?

 

[Nielsh]

Nevermind;
I fixed it by indeed moving the actual folder to /Volumes/ itself, I have a backup of all my files so let's hope the folder survives a restart.

 

[chrfr]

Nevermind;
I fixed it by indeed moving the actual folder to /Volumes/ itself, I have a backup of all my files so let's hope the folder survives a restart.

As stated above, this is a bad idea. /Volumes is intended to be the directory where disks are mounted, not a place for you to store data directly. The best practice is to put the libraries in your home/Documents folder and update the application settings. Even keeping the libraries at the root level of the disk is not a great idea.

 

[leman]

The only 'legit' way to do this AFAIK is to create a disk image (e.g. a sparse bundle) and mount that instead. As mentioned above, putting folders directly into /volumes might be a bad idea and can lead to all kind of exiting problem with future upgrades.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Indeed, if the link didn't work, you're better off using a disk image, or ideally, reconfiguring. Heck, reconfiguring is your best answer anyway. I only mentioned that "folders can be stored in Volumes" as a bit of trivia, not as any sort of recommendation.

So long as you're backed up, you should be safe... but if you forget the details or someone else tries to work on the machine, it could cause some large headaches. Better to sort things out properly now while everything's fresh in your mind. A stitch in time, and all that.

 

[lawlist]

While the previous comments provide hints going in the right direction, it took me some extra time Googling and thinking to come up with a solution that protects the data from being damaged by having a permanent folder inside /Volumes.

Create a dmg or sparse image or sparse bundle, and just place a symlink inside it that leads to the folder that a user wishes to mount. The image can be mounted at login by adding it to the login items in System Preferences / Accounts / Login Items.

Ideally, I'd like to see all of the subfolders and files within the symlinked folder in the root directory, but I haven't figured that part out yet. So, for now, I have to navigate one folder deeper -- e.g., /Volumes/symlinked_folder/