I know the Finder rename bug has generally been fixed — but it’s left me very reluctant to use the Finder to rename boot drives or their partitions.
If I’m formatting a boot drive to reinstall I might rename — but except for that, I never change drive names in the Finder — nor in Disk Utility, come to think of it!
Thanks Adam, great piece — the long lamented Macintosh lives!
The internal drive of my principal Mac has been Mackers for decades now. From an old Dublin expression “Janey Mackers” or “Janey Mack”. Laptops have been called Janey.
I always think ‘new computer’ when I see “Macintosh HD”.
In the past I always just the name of places in Middle Earth. Like Doriath or Rivendell. I somehow don’t bother anymore but perhaps I’ll return to this practice.
Leaving the drive name as Macintosh HD would look like I was using some generic machine, it just doesn’t ‘feel’ right to me. Drive on current laptop is Linden.
Good eye! But that’s sort of different, since it’s referring to the original product from 1984, not to anything that’s current today.
I had no idea—nice catch! I think this counts as an entirely modern and current usage, so we’re up to three, with Macintosh HD and the iMac box. (I wonder if other Mac boxes still have the word “Macintosh” on them.
“Mac Internal HD.” The OS on this machine (2011) is just a clone of the OS on my Macbook-Air, so I probably changed the name to prevent confusion and abbreviated to save space. I personalize them when I format them with Disk Utility.
Regarding renaming the internal drive: I always ensure my boot drive name corresponds to the Computer name (System Preferences -> Sharing -> Computer Name), to help with recognition, when accessing the machine across the network – as previously mentioned by @horo.
I went with a descriptive identifier for my Mac mini, simply adding the Spanish diminuitive suffix “-ito”, to mean little. But, being the Star Trek nerd I am, instead of spelling it “Macito”, I went with Maquito – to honor the Maquis.
And, when I got my “trash can” Mac Pro, since it was also so much smaller than the “cheesegrater” it replaced, I simply went with the similar name of Maquito Pro.
On a freelance Mac service provider, and I frequently upgrade old Macs, replacing rotational drives with SSDs.
When I do this, I name the new boot drive Macintosh SSD. I want the change to be apparent to my clients, but I didn’t want something jarringly different.
You’re killing me lol I typically keep my drive named Macintosh HD even though I know I can change it, it happily reminds me of old times and how exciting it was to actually have an internal HD. Now that I have more networked machines, I think I need to rename a couple because it does get confusing to see more than one “Macintosh HD”.
When I get a new Mac, one of the first things I do is rename the internal drive to my last name followed by a sequence number, so that the name is unique within my network. The drive will also be recognizable on other networks that way. Next, I look for an icon that represents the specific Mac model I have and use that as the icon for the internal drive.
I have always thought an icon that represents a technical device that no user actually sees (unless they open the computer) a strange symbol on a computer that otherwise uses icons that represent objects in the real world. A filing cabinet would have been a better default icon for the internal drive in my opinion.
‘HD’ is not inaccurate. The solid-state drive inside modern Macs is indeed a ‘hard drive’ (that is, a fixed drive) as opposed to a removable like a USB flash drive (or floppy disc!).
Ah noelos, you’re so right, I did get that confused. Pangur Bán has Bán as white and Pangur could be translated as “a fuller.” My father would have scolded me for that. It is a lovely poem, written by a 9th century Irish monk transcribing in Austria. Go raibh míle maith agat!
And the logo for my work is one I made in homage to Pangur Bán:
Pangur Ban is a major supporting character in Cartoon Studio’s wonderful movie, The Secret Of Kells. He’s the pet of the illuminators in the Kells Monastery in the movie, and cats are featured throughout the original manuscript. The plot of the film is based on the illustrations in the manuscript and the poem. It’s a fantastic film that rivals even the best made by Pixar, and the Pangur Ban scene/song is one of the most amazing in the movie: