[colug-432] OT: OSX mysterious disk

[Richard Hornsby]

Sorry this is offtopic, but OSX being what it is (really BSD with a pretty face) I figured someone here might have an idea.

Every reboot this device shows up

brw-r-----  1 rhornsby  operator   14,   5 Mar 10 13:37 /dev/disk2

The reason I noticed is because the system keeps reporting an unformatted disk and asking what I want to do with it.  The mystery device is showing up in both 'Disk Utility' and 'About this Mac' as a 2.2TB USB removable disk - which I do not have.  

USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge:

  Capacity:	2.2 TB (2,199,023,255,552 bytes)
  Removable Media:	Yes
  Detachable Drive:	Yes
  BSD Name:	disk2
  Product ID:	0x2338
  Vendor ID:	0x152d  (JMicron Technology Corp.)
  Version:	 1.00
  Serial Number:	
  Speed:	Up to 480 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer:	JMicron
  Location ID:	0xfa400000
  Current Available (mA):	500
  Current Required (mA):	2
  Partition Map Type:	Unknown
  S.M.A.R.T. status:	Not Supported


There is an external enclosure with a 500GB drive in it - but it is almost always (as now) powered down and shows up properly when powered up.  Removing the USB cable (despite it being powered down so it shouldn't matter) has no effect.  The two internal drives are functioning normally.

It doesn't seem to be causing a huge issue, but it is kind of annoying and I'd like to track down the source.  Is this something where the EEPROM has maybe cached a bad entry somehow that is surviving a reboot?  I've never had a 2.2TB disk, so I have no idea where the system got the idea from in the first place.

thanks
-rj