renaming bootable backups - an observation

[Dan Lester]

Just a comment. I've been surprised that I can't change the names of my bootable backups. That is, when you pull up the bootable backup volume, you click on the icon, and then on the title, the title doesn't get highlighted with a light blue background, and you can't change it. Took me a while to understand that was ONLY the case for bootable backups. For other mounted volumes you could easily change the names. Yes, you can erase the disk with Disk Utility and change the name THEN, but not while there is a bootable backup on it.

I was on the line with escalated Apple support about this, and they made the point that bootable backups are specifically non-writable. I think Time Machine volumes won't allow this either. That all makes some sense, in that a bootable backup should not be changeable. Because if you change it, it isn't a backup anymore!

In Disk Utility, if you call up the "info" page on a volume, there is a "Writable" item listed. Bootable backups are "no". Non-bootable backups are "yes".

Just an interesting observation.

[dnanian]

You may be able to change the name with diskutil on the command line...

[Dan Lester]

Interesting, but when I try to do
diskutil rename "daily backup" "daily backup2"
I get "Failed to rename volume: Read-only file system (49182)".

If I do it as Superuser, I am still denied. Maybe using diskutil as su I can at least change permissions?

[dnanian]

What's curious is that we do this just after we make the replication (since replication copies the name as well). Not sure why it's locked down after a while...but obviously annoying.

[Dan Lester]

Especially strange, because I give the name to my backup disk. SuperDuper doesn't. That is, the name of the disk is NOT part of the backup. So by renaming the backup disk, you really aren't modifying the backup on it. So it doesn't seem sensible that the disk name should be protected.

[dnanian]

Right, but if you do a replication ("Erase, then copy"), the name comes with it, and we have to set it back to what you called it.