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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Can't change startup drive icon

Karen LH - Feb 8, 2008 - 8:40 pm

The icon for my startup disk seems to be "stuck" to something that looks like an internal hard drive. Initially, I was able to change the icon via copy/paste in the Get Info window, but that doesn't seem to work any more.

I think that things changed when I first started using Time Machine. At that point, the icon for BOTH the backup drive and the startup drive changed to the Time Machine icon. A few days ago, I switched to SuperDuper and the startup drive's icon changed to an internal hard drive. But, regardless of the backup method I use, I am unable to change the drive's icon manually.

Serenak - Feb 9, 2008 - 5:18 pm

Hello Karen

thanks for using us at macosx.com and I will try to assist you as best I can

OK - the "internal HD" icon is the OS default (bit naff if you ask me but there you are) - I am guessing that like me you like a nice custom icon that you feel "suits you"

My first guess is to repair the permissions (but if you upgraded to Leopard over Tiger don't ... it can take hours... even if you did a clean Leopard install but brought your user accounts and Applications don't - same scenario)

I use Time Machine but not to a direct HDD... I have used a hack to enable NAS drives so mine goes into a sparse bundle there - if you were using Time Machine straight to an HDD I can guess Apple might like to shove the Time Machine Icon on it... (makes a fair bit of sense)

If you are using SuperDuper I guess you are using the latest 2.5 Leopard compatible version? if not get it... it has important fixes (preserving icons being one of them)

I suggest turning off Time Machine (at least for now) then restarting and log into an Admin Account - even if you are already Admin it might help to create a new Admin Account called "Admin Account" or similar and try using that - try putting on your custom icon there and if you can then run the SuperDuper! 2.5 in Smart Update mode...

let me know if this helps... if not we will explore more

Karen LH - Feb 9, 2008 - 5:36 pm

Doesn't work. I was pretty sure I'd tried from my Admin account before, but I did as you suggested: turned off Time Machine, created a clean Admin account, restarted, and tried to change the icon from the new Admin account. The new icon just won't paste into the Get Info box.

Next? :-)

Serenak - Feb 9, 2008 - 5:50 pm

Errrrm

I was sort of hoping that would do it...

OK - next best idea.... you could be brave and turn on the Root account... it is done in Utilities/Directory Utilities

enable root and give it a password... log in as root and try again..

If that doesn't work well I am stumped really except for one last "desperate measure" get BatChmod from here http://macchampion.com/arbysoft/
use it so set all the privileges for the whole HD to Owner You... Group Admin and Everyone and set RWX to tick on all, tick the Apply Ownership and Unlock too - then apply

Then try again...

once you have done that you WILL need to use Disk Utility to "repair permissions" be prepared to leave the Mac running all night while it chores through every single file on the Mac....

Karen LH - Feb 10, 2008 - 12:58 pm

I think I solved the problem (I hope). I wasn't keen on turning on root, etc., so I looked on the Apple Discussion Forums, and found a post where someone was unable to change the icon for a volume. One of the responses suggested checking the permissions on .VolumeIcons.icns.

So I did. Admin accounts were set to read only for the file, so I changed the setting to Read&Write. After that, I was able to change the icon via the get info window.