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I'm running OSX Mountain Lion, and have a firewire drive hooked up for storage. I would like to make it appear as if it's an internal drive as my online syncing software - sugarsync - doesn't allow the files to reside on external hard drives, and I need the space, thus wanting the files on the external.

How can I make it appear as if it's an internal drive?

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Make a symlink in your SugarSync folder that links to a folder on your external drive:

ln -s /Volumes/ExternalDrive /Volumes/SugarSync/ExternalDrive

Note about hard links

Hard links do not normally point to directories, and they cannot link paths on different volumes or file systems.

Note this risk:

BUT... what happens if the external drive/SD card is disconnected at any point? Would those files be considered deleted, then propopagating a deletion of files across all my computers??? I asked tech support, and they said there WAS a risk of file loss. I did not test this further. Anyone else?? I'm reluctant to test with my live data, and have reached storage capacity."

It's likely that this risk will also apply to solutions that don't use symlinks. Unless the sync'ing application (sugarsync in this case) is programmed to be aware of such a location not always being available to the system.

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  • Issues i've found so far. It depends on what version of the SS software you're running. The old one, 1.x, had a specific location of the folder, i.e. user->documents->magic briefcase. But with the new 2.x version, it now appears as a Drive in the finder. I tried using Alias folders, but version 1.x didn't honor the changes.
    – v15
    Jul 17, 2013 at 22:14
  • @zm15 So you are using version 1.x so that you can access the folder from within your user folder? I'm confused...
    – dtmland
    Jul 17, 2013 at 22:23
  • I was using 1.x since the beginning until now, I only installed 2.x thinking I would gain an advantage in using Alias folders, but didn't realize it sets up a 'drive' on the mac. It appears 1.x has the advantage of choosing where your synced files appear on your computer, i.e. I can choose to put files on a secondary INternal hard drive. In my case my option is an external HD with all the space. Thus, trying to force the software to recognize it...
    – v15
    Jul 17, 2013 at 22:46
  • Where exactly is the "drive" being mounted? /Volumes/SugarSync/ ?
    – dtmland
    Jul 17, 2013 at 22:49
  • Yes, /Volumes/Sugar-Sync. But what i'm not sure of is where those files are actually being stored.. My guess is a temp folder on the OS drive, but I can't seem to map where they actually reside.
    – v15
    Jul 18, 2013 at 13:59

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