eject

Eject multipartitioned drives your way in OS X

When you attach an external drive or other secondary drive to a Mac, the volume on it will mount and become available in the Finder and the Finder sidebar for your various uses. To eject the drive, you simply need to click the eject button next to the drive's name in the sidebar, or select the drive and press Command-E, choosing the option to do so from the contextual menu, or even drag it to the trash.

These actions can be performed on one or more selected volumes; once it's ejected, you can safely remove the drive from … Read more

How to set up an Eject All hot key in OS X

If you have a MacBook system that you regularly use at a desk such as in an office work space, then you may have a number of peripheral storage devices set up to manage backups and work-specific data, whether attached directly to the system or through a Thunderbolt, FireWire, or USB docking device. These can be convenient when you need them, but quite the opposite when you're packing up to depart.

The main reason for this is OS X's requirement that you manually unmount each drive that's attached to the system by either dragging it to the … Read more

How solar storms squeeze Earth's magnetosphere

At a time of increasing solar storms, researchers have released images of how these solar outbursts affect the protective magnetic shield around the Earth.

The Southwest Research Institute yesterday published visualizations that show how powerful solar storms temporarily compress the magnetic field that surrounds the Earth.

Studying the impact of solar storms on the magnetosphere provides insight into how satellites could be affected. The sun is entering a period of peak activity where more coronal mass ejections of high-energy particles from the sun are expected in the year ahead.

Southwest Research Institute researchers collected data from two NASA spacecraft -- … Read more

MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week we have questions on SUID file errors when fixing permissions, options for ejecting optical drives, problems with optical drives immediately ejecting, and the lack of a track joining option for audio books in iTunes 10. While we continually answer e-mail questions and present a few here, we certainly welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: SUID File errors when fixing permissions

MacFixIt reader "Ian" asks:

When I do a Permissions Repair … Read more