Object Annihilation

I recently tried to drag an icon from the sidebar in Finder onto the desktop and it disappeared. luckily it was just a shortcut to something that was hidden deeper in Finder.

This seems kind of dangerous. Is it possible to delete the Macintosh HD this way. I have XP installed too, if I'd have tried to drag that onto the desktop would it have been gone forever ?

I don't want to find out the hard way

No deletion wouldn't happen. Aliases are removable from the sidebar and the dock, that's why you can delete them that way. The system (it resides in the Macintosh HD) would never delete itself, nor the applications: the worse case scenario is you might duplicate it depending on where you dragged it.

And the icon of Macintosh HD you see in the sidebar is only an alias so that icon can be deleted but it won't harm the original.

I have 2 Macintosh HD icons. One in Finder and the other on the dock. Hypothetically, if I came home drunk and deleted both of them for a laugh, where would I get the originals from ?

Open a Finder window.

Go > Enclosing Folder (or press Command UpArrow)
Repeat until you get to Macintosh HD


Or
Go > Computer
You'll find all your mounted drives (including Macintosh HD) and Network there.


But the only way you can remove Macintosh HD from the Desktop is if you did it in Finder Preferences... which you probably wouldn't think of if you're drunk. XD

Stormer said:

I have 2 Macintosh HD icons. One in Finder and the other on the dock. Hypothetically, if I came home drunk and deleted both of them for a laugh, where would I get the originals from ?

Click to expand...

The one in the dock is only an alias and aliases can be deleted but won't harm or have an influence on the original items as I posted earlier.

remain said:

Open a Finder window.

Go > Enclosing Folder (or press Command UpArrow)
Repeat until you get to Macintosh HD

Click to expand...

Thanks, didn't know you could get to it that way. I wonder how many people have deleted the Macintosh HD and panicked