10.4: Use Adobe Creative Suite with case-sensitive HFS

May 16, '05 09:29:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Tiger only hintWith the release of Tiger, Apple has allowed the option to format a hard disk in the format called "Mac OS Extended (case-sensitive,journaled)." This format is also available on 10.3 Server (and 10.3 client with some minor hacking), and is the default for Tiger Server. The benefits of a case-sensitive file system are many for a unix/server environment.

One of the downsides I have noticed of a case-sensitive file system is that Adobe's CS 2 Suite does not work at all. The solution is simple though:

  1. Use apple's Disk Utility app to create a new sparse disk image of at least 5 GB (it doesn't matter really, since it will only end up as large as the contents on the disk image)
  2. Mount the new disk image
  3. Install CS 2 to the disk image (since it is formatted as case insensitive, the apps will work fine from the disk image)
Enjoy! It's a little bit of an annoyance to have to mount a disk image to use the Adobe apps, but at least it's a workaround until Adobe fixes the problem. You can also mount the disk image in your login items, which will allow Photoshop, etc. files to always be double-clickable.

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Mac OS X Hints
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