The setting your refer to, is stored in a hidden Finder file called .DS_STORE
This file is obviously overwritten by your friend’s Mac who obviously uses different settings.
As far as I know, there’s no way (other than perhaps making the file .DS_STORE read only in the USB so your friend’s Mac cannot write the “new annoying settings” to it).
You’ll need to jump into the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
Connect your USB Drive, open Terminal.
In Terminal, type:
cd /Volumes
ls
You should see your own Macintosh HD (or whatever name your internal drive(s) have) and the USB drive (with the name it might have).
Cd into the USB drive like:
cd MyUSBDrive
if the drive has spaces in its name, you must enclose it between quotes
For example:
cd “My Strange USB”
Once in there, you can perform an ‘ls’ to view the contents of the USB. Do that to make sure it’s the right one. Else go back to cd /Volumes and start over :)
Now adjust the settings in the finder the way you want them.
Done?
Now to change the permissions in the USB drive:
sudo chmod 444 .DS_Store
NOTE: The above command might ask you for your password, that is ok. The password won’t be seen when you type it. Just type your password and press enter. Remember the commands in Terminal are case sensitive.
What does that do?: chmod is a command that changes the permissions of files and/or directories. In this case, since the file is a hidden file from the finder, we have to do the job from the terminal (which can always see hidden things). The numbers (444) are read only for everybody.
If you don’t know what chmod does or how it works (or why 444) I recommend you take a look at the help (man page) for the command. In Terminal type:
man chmod
Will this work?
To be honest, I don’t know. I believe it will, but I’m not sure if ACLs are preserved in USB devices. If the USB is formatted with FAT32 (they usually are so Windows can read/write) the above might not work.
Other than that, there’s no magical way to tell finder do this, and do it this way. Because if there’s a .DS_Store file, Finder will read settings from there.
You must have a mouse plugged in.
In System Preferences > General, under the "Show Scroll bars" section, there are three options:
- Automatically based on mouse or trackpad
- When scrolling
- Always
Each act differently.
Automatically... with a mouse plugged in will show the scroll bars. When you are just on the trackpad, the scroll bars will be hidden until you scroll. This is the default setting.
When scrolling will always hide the scrollbars unless you are scrolling. If you are on a MacBook, this is probably what you are most used to seeing, so turn this on if you use a mouse occasionally and hate the look of the scroll bars. (This is how I have mine set).
Always will always show the scrollbars, so if you like them, they will always be there for you.
[Edit: I just saw that there was a response up at the top. Hopefully this here will help someone searching to find the answer quicker.]
Best Answer
This happens when that separator needs to accomodate space for a scroll bar due to content length. You can resize them with the handles at the bottom end since 10.0.