Prevent external drive from re-mounting after reboot?

[CavemanMike]

I was thinking of partitioning my new external drive in half, creating two separate time macine backups, and keeping one volume off-line in case of a malware attack on the network. My vision was each month to switch to the other TM volume and keep the other offline for the month.

I'm guessing that after a reboot, both partitions would be available to the operating system.

Any way to keep a partition of a connected drive from becoming re-available after a reboot?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Hi Mike,

You could give Jettison a go to see if it meets your requirements.

Cheers

 

[CavemanMike]

Thanks @m4v3r1ck

The user has an iMac and a macbook. I got him two 2TB external drives for backups.

Based on my newfound fear of malware attacking the Time Machine backups, I'm trying to come up with a better solution than buying him 2 more drives.

The family pics will be uploaded to his 1TB o365 onedrive.

-Mike

 

[desertman]

I'm doing exactly what you want to accomplish with the help of "Power Manager" (which unfortunately has a $50 price tag): https://www.dssw.co.uk/powermanager/. How to use this utility for this task is explained here:

How to Schedule a Hard Drive to Unmount or Eject:
<https://www.dssw.co.uk/blog/2013-03-28-how-to-schedule-a-hard-drive-to-unmount-or-eject/>

How to Mount a Mac Drive to a Schedule:
<https://www.dssw.co.uk/blog/2017-06-12-schedule-drive-mount-on-macos/>

Works very well on a daily basis in the background and gives me some more peace of mind for the (very unlikely) possibility of catching an encrypting malware.
https://www.dssw.co.uk/blog/2013-03-28-how-to-schedule-a-hard-drive-to-unmount-or-eject/
Apparently there are also other methods to do this, but I don't know whether they really work:

https://wolfpaulus.com/mac/noautomount/
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7942

 

[treekram]

Apparently there are also other methods to do this, but I don't know whether they really work:

https://wolfpaulus.com/mac/noautomount/
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7942

If you know how to work with Terminal, I think the vifs route is the preferred method (2nd link). I also haven't tried it. Another, better formatted guide (looks like the same commands) is at (don't be put off by that Desktop image):
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/11/24/prevent-partitions-from-mounting-mac/

 

[CavemanMike]

Thanks for the reply @treekram , and thanks for not berating me at Mac's can't catch viruses
_Mike

 

[dianeoforegon]

Try Mountain $5.99 http://appgineers.de/mountain/

Demo mode works for 30 min. The app does not have to be running to remember the settings on mount.

 

[CavemanMike]

Great suggestion @dianeoforegon. I just installed it and seems to do what I want.

However, it was last updated 1 year ago and doesn't mention sierra.

I was trying it out (less than 30 minutes) and the icon vanished from the menu bar :-(

The one concern I have is that dragged out an icon to a volume on my Network Attached Storage. Then a simple click of it re-mounted it. I'm concerned that a malware attack might simply enumerate the volumes and auto-mount them.

Maybe it's just safer if I manually connect to my NAS when I need it (rarely) since my current stuff is in onedrive.

-Mike

 

[dianeoforegon]

Mountain is working in High Sierra. Not all apps need frequent updates to work. I still use IC-Switch that hasn't been updated since 2011, but it still works in High Sierra. Useful for changing default web browsers, email app. Version 1.5b1 is available: http://media.flip.macrobyte.net/files/IC-Switch1.5b1.zip

The demo only works for 30 min. That's why it disappeared from your menu bar. Normally, you just set preferences on what volumes you do not to mount at startup then quit the app. However if you are wanting to mount/unmount during the day, you would need to purchase or select to open Mountain each time you want to make a change.

 

[CavemanMike]

Thanks @dianeoforegon . I'll try again.