Hard drive icon with small arrow

I'm sure I did something to cause this, but, not sure what. On my desktop I have my "MacintoshHD" icon as well as another icon exactly like it, except there is a small arrow pointing to it at the lower left side. What did I do? And, what do I need to do to get rid of this? I searched for this particular situation in the other threads but found nothing. There is a jpeg of the two icons attached. Thanks for your help.

The HD icon with the small arrow is an "alias" (pointer to the real HD). You can just drag the one with the arrow to the Trash to get rid of it. No, it won't delete your MacIntosh HD.

Regards.

You must have had the Macintosh HD icon selected and accidently hit the 'Make Alias; button under File. As chscag says trashing the alias, and not the original, will cause no problems other than getting rid of it.

alias

Thank you chscag and harryb2448. I suspected that it would be ok, but wasn't sure. Much appreciated.

You could have done it by accidentally keying Command⌘ and L while the HD icon was selected;

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