While sitting at the Boatdeck Cafe in Mawson Lakes, I was approached by a bloke who said he had just switched his Windows laptop for a MacBook, and he had a question about drive letters in Mac OS X. I’ve been asked this question many, many times before so I figure many switchers must be having this problem, so I’m posting about the issue here.
ASIDE: Isn’t it funny how Mac people are generally more willing to talk to other Mac people in cafes and whatnot compared to Windows users? I can’t imagine many Windows users saying "I noticed you’re using a Dell, could I ask you some quesions about how to use the taskbar?"
The other funny thing is, I don’t know why this is! Is it just because Macs are less common, or that if you see a Mac user you can be fairly confident they’re running the same software as you? Or is it some psychological Steve Jobs thing?
Mac OS X is the default operating system shipped with new Macs, and it has it’s heritage in Unix. Like other Unix-like OSs such as Linux, Mac OS X does not use drive letters to reference mounted drives: instead it uses essentially virtual directories for each drive located on the primary "root" directory. This would be equivalent to drive c: in DOS.
Windows 2000 Explorer showing drives, for comparison
For example, on Windows if you wanted to reference the notepad.exe in the Windows folder on your primary hard disk, and another file on your optical drive, the addresses would typically look something like this:
C:\Windows\system32\notepad.exe
D:\Folder\Another\chuckpeddle.txt
On a modern Mac, your primary hard drive is typically the one where you have Mac OS X installed. Therefore, all drives you have mounted on your Mac will not only appear on your Desktop, but will be found within their own virtual folders in the hidden Volumes directory on the primary hard disk, which is ALWAYS referenced with a single forward-slash /.
Leopard Finder showing the hidden /Volumes directory
Here are some examples. The first is the address of a file in our Applications folder on our primary hard drive, the second is a CD-ROM we’ve inserted, and the third is a USB key:
/Applications/TextEdit.app
/Volumes/Microsoft Office 2008/Installer.app
/Volumes/Ruben Memory Key/homework.txt
Notice how the virtual directories which are named after the volume essentially replace the drive letter used on Windows, DOS, CP/M etc. In the first example we didn’t need to reference the Volumes folder because it’s on our primary hard disk. Mac OS X also uses forward-slashes instead of back-slashes (just like a URL) just like other Unix-like systems.
The only caveat to this system is that Apple intentionally hides the /Volumes folder by default. To view it in the Finder, navigate to the Go menu and enter /Volumes.
Of course you can also fire up your /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and enter cd /Volumes, then ls to list the contents.
Hi,
I’m using Parallels running XP Pro on a MacBook. This program shows a drive letter refferencing the Mac volume. I’d like to change that drive letter name so it would reflect my Windows configuration on my XP pc.
How can I change that drive letter on my Mac or in the Virtual Machine ran on that Mac?
Tx 4 your help
Hello Jan,
Parallels assigns a virtual drive letter for your Mac hard drive so you can access it within your Windows XP Pro virtual machine, so it’s Parallels that decides what the drive letter will be. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of Parallels on hand to try, I suggest you contact the Parallels support team or post on their forums. I used to be a user back in 2006 and they’re really friendly.
Sorry I can’t be much more help than that.
Found this post through a google search on changing drive letters on a Mac–but I don’t really see how you change the drive letter. I just replaced an external HD with a larger one and I want all references to now point to the new one.
The key is there aren’t drive letters in Mac OS X, only labels. If you label your new drive with the same label as the old one, your links should work.