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How Do I Make a USB Drive Unremovable To the OS?

Currently running OSX 10.11.6 on my MBA 2013 and Mac Pro 2006 and I want to make certain USB drive(s) unremovable like the internal drives, so they can’t be accidentally ejected from Finder.
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Michael Mulhern

Comments: One Response to “How Do I Make a USB Drive Unremovable To the OS?”

    6 years ago

    Yes, you can do this. But you need to use the Terminal to change a hidden system setting. And I don't think you can do this for only one drive. It works for all of them. Once you launch Terminal, use this:

    defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitEject -bool true

    Then restart the Finder:

    killall Finder

    What this does is to remove the Eject command in the File menu. But the little eject buttons still appear in the sidebar next to removable drives. But they no longer work! So mission accomplished.

    So since this affects all drives, then what if you really do want to eject a drive? Well, it turns out that Disk Utility is unaffected by this. So you can still run Disk Utility, select the drive, and unmount it there. Sounds like this could be a reasonable solution for you.

    Oh, and use false instead of true in the Terminal command to undo the change.

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