My daughter (in another state) recently booted in to her backup drive from her 2012 iMac (10.8.2). It mounted normally, but its location is not at the top-right most corner. It's in second place. Can that be? If so, how does one change things such that the boot volume is at the top right?

I'm not sure it's always possible to get the boot volume to appear at the top right. This used to be the default, but hasn't been since at least Leopard. I recall at least one other thread discussing this, but I haven't located it yet. If I find it or other relevant info, I'll update.

Me thinks moi is a bit out of date. A very large bit.

Indeed I held the belief that the old, boot volume default rule remained. I suppose Extension Manager is gone too…

Still, should you find additional detail, I would be most indebted.

I haven't yet found the thread I alluded to above, but dug up some options to try:

- Use an alias of the Startup volume: partitioned HDD desktop icons
- Rearrange volume icons manually, or try various "Sort by" options: Startup Disk on Desktop

In both options Desktop icon location may change depending on Startup volume and User account, requiring adjustments.

I used the alias trick and it worked well until I finally decided to delete the aliases and just use the Finder from the Dock as my portal.

If you have keep arranged turned on, the boot drive should appear first, followed by other mounted volumes (sorted in whatever order you requested) followed by all other icons sorted by the requested order.

Or am I missing something? I regularly have 12-25 volume icons on my desktop when working with my service drives. My desktop is set to keep arranged by name, and it always works as described above. 10.6.8.

The order of the volumes can vary though if two volumes have the same name.

That's the question I was trying to answer when looking for that missing thread I mentioned. I vaguely recall that the ordering methods listed here don't always work, and I wanted to find out when or why without having to reinvent that wheel. Meanwhile, the methods suggested above will have to do 'as-is'.

right now I have one service drive and an external attached. My desktop is set to keep arranged by name, and shows everything including shares, volumes, externals, and invisibles.

Upper right is my boot drive "MBP". Following that are 11 other volumes, which are in alphabetical order. Following that are the other regular documents and folders including invisibles such as .DS_Store, all of which are in alphabetical order.

I have also noticed that two hidden "shares" named "home" and "net" do not appear on my desktop until something force quits and relaunches Finder. Those items are placed after the physical volumes but before the regular files and folders, I expect that is the place in the order where all shares will appear. (they are also alphabetized amongst themselves)

So the order is:

1. boot volume
2. other physical volumes
3. mounted shares
4. everything else

with 2, 3, and 4 being alphabetized within their group.

I don't have the time right now to play with physical volumes of the same name to see exactly what order items with the same name appear in. Sorted between each other (the dups) by mount point name is tempting to suggest but my confidence isn't too terribly high.