Why can't I move volume folders to the dock?

[LarryfromGwent]

I'm having problems with the El Capitan dock on my iMac - pretty minor but annoying and disruptive to smooth working.

I've recently removed two old external hard drives from my iMac setup, because one was starting to fail. I've replaced them with a new external hard drive, connected to the USB2 port on the iMac. The drive is partioned into 5 volumes. I had a similar arrangement previously with the two old hard drives but one being a single volume, the other 4 volumes.

I would like these partitions plus the internal iMac HDD, Applications and Utilities folder icons on the dock (bottom, in my case, just above Trash) - I had exactly this arrangement previously.

I can add the iMac HDD, Applications and Utilities folder icons to the dock without difficulty, just as before.

However, I can only add 2 of the external HDD partitions. If I try to add a 3rd, it snaps away.

I can, however, add folders from any of those partitions.

I have repaired the permissions on the internal startup HDD. Using Onyx, I have restarted the dock and restored the dock defaults. I've deleted pretty much every cache. I've changed various settings in System Preferences, hoping that might cause a rewrite of a settings file.

The 5 partitions clearly have different BSD names and are all formatted in the same way - Mac OS Extended (Journaled) HFS+. The sharing and permissions are all the same. I've run First Aid from Disk Utility on the drive and the volumes - several times.

Any ideas on how to get all the volume icons onto the dock?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

This is a puzzling issue. Honestly, I have never heard of anyone adding disk partitions to the Dock, as it is mainly designed to store application icons, and shortcuts to files, folders, and weblocs. Strange that it would work previously, then not allow adding more than two.

Have you tried resetting the Dock via Terminal commands? Of course, we recommend having a current Time Machine or other backup before proceeding.

How to reset the Mac Dock to default

C

 

[LarryfromGwent]

Thanks. Just tried your suggested route to resetting the Dock via terminal. Appeared to do what it should.

Except, it hasn't resolved my problem ... :-(

I have volumes/partitions in the dock because when set to list view, it gives a very quick method to reach any folder on that volume/partition even when it is nested inside several other folders. For example, I have a partition "Larry Data" with folders nested in some cases 3 or 4 levels down. I can click on the icon in the dock for that volume/folder, all the top level folders appear as a list, I move the mouse across to the folder I want, the folders inside that folder appear and so on until I reach the file I want. Very quick and easy to find the file I want. I'm not aware of any other technique which is as fast

I suspect my problem is something to do with how I formatted the new HDD and set up and named the partitions. My guess is that if I reformat the HDD, set up the partitions again and take more care naming them, it'll probably sort itself out but that's a bit of a hassle and makes me nervous with 300 Gb of data to move around.

The thing is, I did have this same problem a few years ago - I think it was also to do with a new external HDD which I was installing. And I solved it eventually but can't remember how!