Prevent external HD from booting

[burnswuff]

I installed Mountain Lion as a partition on my external HD. It also contains my Time machine backups along with two other partitions. However, every time I plug it in, it always opens the ML install drive and asks if I want to install ML. Is there a way to close out of this so that that particular partition does open when plugged in?

Also, is there a way to hide that specific partition from the desktop?

 

[Arelunde]

Sounds like the easiest solution would be to drag/drop the ML file to a separate flash and store it there, deleting it from your current external HD.

 

[Weaselboy]

I installed Mountain Lion as a partition on my external HD. It also contains my Time machine backups along with two other partitions. However, every time I plug it in, it always opens the ML install drive and asks if I want to install ML. Is there a way to close out of this so that that particular partition does open when plugged in?

Also, is there a way to hide that specific partition from the desktop?

Do an option key boot and select the partition/drive you want to boot from. Then go to System Preferences and in the Startup Disk pane select the partition/drive you want to boot from and restart. From then on it will boot from the partition you selected.

 

[Arelunde]

I just thought of that, but had no idea of how to accomplish it. Thanks for the info - I will save that for future use.