Can I make the previously invisible folders invisible after restore?
 

Hello,

I have used SD! to restore to a new hard drive and want to know if there is a way to make the previously invisible folders invisible after the restore?

Thanks.

When you start up from the drive, what's visible that wasn't before?

Hi Dave,

Three folders are visible - all aliases - etc, tmp, var.

How did you restore?

I just cloned (copied using backup all files) from the old drive to the new drive. And now I have cloned the new drive (with those extra visible files) to what will be the new clone and I have another folder now visible, dev.

Did you use Disk Utility to do the restore, though?

Oh, yes I used Disk Utility to do the restore.

OK. This is a bug in Disk Utility, actually. While you can manually hide these folders, it might be best to leave them alone unless you're relatively technically inclined...

Hi Dave,

I am technically inclined. I work as a Mac tech. Can you detail how I can do this in Terminal or by booting into single user mode?

Many thanks,
Marianne

I think I solved it.
 

What I did was go into TextEdit, set the format to plain text, and listed:

var
etc
tmp

Saved as .hidden to the root level of the drive.
Restarted - the folders are now invisible. Ran Disk Utility to verify the drive and the permissions - no problems.

Now I am thinking to do the same thing on the backup drive. These are both internal SATA drives BTW. Do you think that doing this will have any bad effect on SuperDuper! and SmartUpdate or do you think I should re-do a full clone to the backup drive now that those files are invisible.

Thanks.

OK. With the developer tools installed, you'll want to use "SetFile" to turn on the invisible flag:

That'll work too, but that's the "Panther" way: Tiger changed over to attributes. It'll have no effect at all, so don't be concerned. But it might not work with future OS releases.

By "might not work with future OS releases" do you mean that it may cause a conflict or that the hidden folders might just be visible again?

Do you recommend doing the same thing on the backup drive and continuing with SmartUpdate or erase the backup and allowing SuperDuper! to do a full backup?

Thanks.
Marianne

Smart Update is just fine. And -- I think they'll just be visible again. You can do the SetFile thing too, though. :)

Thanks lots Dave. Have a great day. Howdy to Taiko.

Marianne

You too -- I gave Taiko a pat for ya!

I've had the same experience as mobydisk, Dave, but lack her technical expertise (and yours, obviously) to deal with it. I've made bootable copies of my iBook drive on two partitions of a larger backup drive. The backups seem to work perfectly, but when I'm in the iBook's drive, both backups have the normally invisible dev file visible. When I boot from either of the backups, that backup's dev file becomes invisible again (a function of the Finder, I guess, as you've explained above), but the other backup's dev file can still be seen -- and copied and (I fear, although I'm not about to risk the attempt) moved or deleted. Meanwhile, the dev file on the iBook's internal drive stays invisible no matter which drive is the startup.
I presume there's a command in Terminal that will reset both backup dev files to invisibility so that some darned fool (likely myself) won't inadvertently move or delete them, but I'm a total and fearful Unix virgin. Should I go there at all? And if so, can you take me through it step by step?

Doug, really, no -- just don't touch the file. Think of it like the "System" folder: don't touch, and don't let it bother you.