While I was having troubles with self-ejecting external drives, app freezes and failing backups (all probably due to the disappearing drive!), I noticed that my Mac's name had decided to change to a "clone" by adding "(2)" to the end of its original name. I suspected the usual character at first. But my cat claimed absolute ignorance and also pointed out that the keyboard is very difficult for her to use correctly. I really couldn't argue with her, especially in the presence of other humans...so I decided to do some searching.
Sure enough, this is not a particularly recent or unknown occurrence. There are several threads on the Apple Forums and the usual answer is that the Mac gets confused sometimes, 'sees' itself on the network and assumes it is another identically named computer and adds the number to prevent further confusion. Which may be fine for the Mac but it doesn't help the user very much! I was actually hoping that I had a second Mac hiding under the desk or elsewhere. Alas, it was simply a need to change the name in the Sharing Pref Panel.
I suspect the problem occurred with the recent manual shutdowns required in the last few days...
