Extra files ? (automount, dev, mach_kernel)

[temp444]

I have 3 external FW hard disks.

On Drive A Partition 1, I installed OSX and all the latest patches to make it a baseline OSX.

Then I used SuperDuper to copy all files from A1 to Drive C, Partition 1.
C1 now shows:
[] Applications
[] Library
[] System
[] Users

Then I used SuperDuper to copy all files from A1 to Drive C, Partition 2.
C2 now shows:
[] Applications
[] automount
[] dev
[] Library
mach_kernel
[] Network
[] System
[] Users

Why are there extra files ??? automount, dev, mach_kernel, Network ???

Regards
David

[dnanian]

They're completely normal, David, and are also present on the other drive: they're just hidden by the Finder when you boot from the volume.

(If you want to check, open the terminal and use the following command:

ls /

That'll show you the files that are *really* in the "root" of your boot volume!)

[Timmy]

I have noticed that the above mentioned files are usually visible right after performing a full back-up. After a while they do become hidden.

[dnanian]

That could be a classic Finder problem where Finder doesn't always update to show you files that it didn't copy itself. Similarly, it sometimes doesn't "hide" things that it didn't know were there.

It's hard to work around this kind of bug, but you can always "prod" the finder into refreshing by restarting it -- to do so, Cmd-Option-Click on the Finder icon in the dock and choose "relaunch". That should refresh anything that's a bit behind the times.

[temp444]

Thankyou for responses. Much appreciated.

BTW When I copied from an OSX image file (instead of from a system drive), there were no extra files!

[dnanian]

Understood. They're not really "extra" -- honest!