How can I prevent JungleDisk/MacOS X (10.6) creating a local volume for a removed external drive?

Ok, here is situation: I use JungleDisk to sync an online folder on to a external drive connected to my Mac.

If I right click Finder, click Go to Folder... then type /Volumes/ I see the drive linked here.

Once I remove the external drive, an actual folder is created here in the name of the external drive, JungleDisk continues to copy files to this folder, rather than stop.

Is this a feature of Mac OS X? Can I turn if off?

After I re-connect my external drive, the link to the drive is appended with a 1 (so if I called the drive SpareDrive it becomes SpareDrive 1 as the newly created folder is called SpareDrive.

I realise my explanation isn't very clear, but anyone understand this, and knows how to prevent it happening please let me know.

PS: I have a low reputation as I don't use this often, I tend to use stackoverflow, but will check back here for answers.

Vamos

Posted 2011-05-01T08:27:42.803

Reputation: 123

1It's most likely a feature of JungleDisk. It will detect that the local path to sync to does not exist, and I assume it uses something like mkdir -p when recreating the folders, which will create the /Volumes/DiskName entry automatically without caring that it's usually a mountpoint. As I'm unable to test it since I don't use JungleDisk, I can't say for sure. – Daniel Beck – 2011-05-01T08:42:08.530

Daniel, I think you might be right, though I have come across this before without JungleDisk, but I can't remember which other app did it. I couldn't find an option on JungleDisk to turn this off... so there might not be a solution. – Vamos – 2011-05-01T08:56:12.323

Try writing to JD devs/support and ask about that behavior, requesting an error message or something like that if the root sync destination does not exist at all. – Daniel Beck – 2011-05-01T09:05:16.623

I've submitted a ticket to http://support.jungledisk.com, hopefully I'll get a nice reply from JD explaining this.

– Vamos – 2011-05-02T13:05:10.347

JD are quick to reply! "Unfortunately, Jungle Disk will not automatically stop syncing if an external drive is disconnected. For now, I would suggest pausing sync (press Pause Sync in the Jungle Disk activity monitor) prior to disconnecting the drive." – Vamos – 2011-05-02T13:30:17.603

Answers

not sure if you figured out how to fix it. generally when i have this problem on linux, I have the app write to a symlink rather than a mountpoint.

E.g. If JungleDisk is writing to /Volumes/SpareDrive (which is the mountpoint) and it creates a SpareDrive directory when the drive is not connected, I'd do this:

sudo ln -s /Volumes/SpareDrive /Users/Shared/SpareDrive

Then have JungleDisk write to /Users/Shared/SpareDrive instead. When JungleDisk write to /Users/Shared/SpareDrive when /Volumes/SpareDrive is not mounted, it'll just throw an error (symlink target doesn't exist) instead of creating the folder.

goofrider

Posted 2011-05-01T08:27:42.803

Reputation: 146

I've since moved to using CrashPlan. The symlink idea would have worked great, and I can already see how I should use this method when referring to external drives. – Vamos – 2012-10-01T08:35:57.120

This seems to be an issue with JungleDisk and not Mac OS X.

JungleDisk will continue to sync data, even if the destination folder is on an external drive that is disconnected.

Here is the response from support:

"Unfortunately, Jungle Disk will not automatically stop syncing if an external drive is disconnected. For now, I would suggest pausing sync (press Pause Sync in the Jungle Disk activity monitor) prior to disconnecting the drive."

Vamos

Posted 2011-05-01T08:27:42.803

Reputation: 123