ADC Home > Reference Library > Technical Q&As > Carbon > File Management >

Disconnected aliases on CD-ROM and Alias Manager

Q Sometimes, after copying an HFS volume one-to-one to a CD-ROM, aliases which look perfectly fine on the source volume are disconnected on the CD-ROM - the Alias Manager claims that it cannot find the volume. What should I do to detect and fix a possible disconnected alias before writing it to CD-ROM?

A Sometimes, when aliases move from hard drives to CD-ROMs, volume information changes, rendering the alias unresolvable. The Alias Manager requires the following pieces of information in order to identify a volume:
  • the volume's name
  • the volume's creation date (which should be a unique number)
  • the volume's kind (ejectable, non-ejectable, floppy disk, or foreign file system)

The Alias Manager expects all three pieces of information to match. If all three do not match, the Alias Manager attempts to identify the volume by matching 2 of those 3 items, trying for a volume match in this order:

  1. By name and creation date
  2. By creation date and volume kind (if the volume name changed)
  3. By name and volume kind (if the creation date is not stable, as with some network file systems)

When pressing a CD-ROM, you are moving aliases from a hard drive (non-ejectable volume kind) to an ejectable volume kind. If the volume name or creation date of the hard drive changes after alias creation, the aliases may not resolve properly.

You can avoid this problem by ensuring that the volume name of the hard disk does not change while you are building a CD-ROM's content. Also, do not backup, reformat, or restore a hard disk while you are building a CD-ROM content, so the creation date does not change.

Sometimes, valid-looking aliases fail to resolve. Because the Finder creates alias files, the Finder is responsible for resolving them. The Finder does not always check and update aliases as carefully as you might. Additionally, the Finder always resolves aliases using a relative search path.

[Mar 26 2001]

Did this document help you?
Yes: Tell us what works for you.
It’s good, but: Report typos, inaccuracies, and so forth.
It wasn’t helpful: Tell us what would have helped.