OS X: Hide Your Hard Disk from the Desktop
Contributed by Rob Rogers 
Tagged: Apple Mac Mac OS X Leopard If you want to hide the Hard Disk icon from your desktop so that you can maintain a clean look, follow this Tech-Recipe. These directions are accurate for all modern versions of OS X including 10.7 Lion.
1. Open Finder.
2. Go to Preferences.
3. Select the General tab.
4. Uncheck the Hard disks checkbox.
5. Close the Preferences window.
Update 2/28/2012 –
This continues to work for OS X Lion as well as this screen shot shows:
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Brian said on February 11, 2009
Um.. i donno why but mac dosen’t let me hide the hard disk. Only thing that can be hide is External disks. Does anyone know the solution for this problem T_T?
Easter said on March 1, 2009
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!
I could not for the life of me figure out how to get those off!!!
Brian said on May 24, 2009
If you want to hide just one:
SetFile -a V “/Volumes/DiskName”
Use a small V to bring it back:
SetFile -a v “/Volumes/DiskName”
You need to restart Finder (or reboot) for the change to be visible. I do this for my TimeMachine/TimeCapsule volumes.
Mark said on May 29, 2009
To Brian:
SetFile -a V “/Volumes/Bootcamp HD”
-bash: SetFile: command not found
What’s wrong?
Will said on July 3, 2009
It looks like you need the developer tooks (Xcode and company) installed, and you have to “tell it where it is,” according to http://www.mackb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/macintosh/2850/SetFile-command-not-working
Will said on July 3, 2009
Sorry, tools. Developer tools.
Arvivi said on October 30, 2010
Great help, thanks!
Richard Chen said on November 29, 2010
Thank you. My 2-year-old managed to do this (or some equivalent), and I couldn’t figure out how to reverse it.
Anil Kumar said on February 14, 2011
No need to restart, Just Relaunch Finder…
Arnold said on February 28, 2011
Thank you for your information. I’ve attempted to do what you described at the top of this page, but I was blocked. When I went to the preferences panel and clicked on the general tab, among other differenced there was no ’show these items on the desktop’ heading, no list. Despite hours of looking on the internet for clarification, going to many sites, I got no where. The sites that gave the same procedure as you gave above all referred to the same preference panel, etc. Why is it so hard so many times to fix extremely simple things on the computer!!!!! I have an Mac OS X, version 10.5.8 Thank you for any help. Sincerely, Arnych
David Kirk - Founder/Editor said on February 28, 2011
Sorry, Arnold. This method continues to work on all the versions of OS X that I have here. I even just tested it for OS X Lion. I even updated the article to show a screenshot from the new OS.
Arnold said on February 28, 2011
Hi David. Thanks for your reply. The only thing I can think of is that my preference panel set up must be because of some unknown preference
set-up for the panel. I’ll look into this to see if this may be possible.
Arnold
Anonymous said on February 28, 2011
Let us know if you figure it out. If you are having the problem, others might be as well.
Arnold said on February 28, 2011
OK David, I will. Arnold
Arnold said on March 1, 2011
Hi David. I found the problem. It was me. Not being computer knowledgeable
at all unfortunately, I mistook one information pane for another; that, and one other piece of information about how the desktop works, cleared things up. Sorry to have taken your time! Thanks for your help. Arnold
Anonymous said on March 1, 2011
Cool! Glad you figured it out.