Mounting/Unmounting Software

I tried searching for this and didn't find anything, so I apologize in advance if this has already been posted.

I have a MacBook that I use with an external hard drive. I often mount and unmount the external drive without restarting my computer and I find it quite a hassle to have to open disk utility in order to mount it. The reason I mount and unmount is mainly because I don't want to wear out the drive. Is there some sort of script or program that I can use that would make this process easier?

if you often mount and unmount then i would suggest simply leaving it mounted. the wear and tear of thermal expansion and spin-up/down are probably doing more damage than just leaving it connected.

Leaving it mounted is not going to "wear out" the drive. If you do need to mount/unmount often, the easiest way to re-mount it is simply unplug/plug back in the USB/FireWire cable that connects it. There is really no need to fire up Disk Utility.

D3v1L80Y said:

Leaving it mounted is not going to "wear out" the drive. If you do need to mount/unmount often, the easiest way to re-mount it is simply unplug/plug back in the USB/FireWire cable that connects it. There is really no need to fire up Disk Utility.

Click to expand...

Alright, well I thought there would be an easier way to do this without the hassle of having to either unplug/plug, leave it running or use disk utility. Thanks for the quick reply from both of you, although this isn't quite the answer I was looking for. In case anyone does know of another solution that will work for me, I'd love to give it a shot. Thanks again.

Why aren't you just dragging it to the trash to unmount it. Or select it type type Comand-E to eject it. Once unmounted you just turn it off. When you turn it on, it should just mount it.

xstep said:

Why aren't you just dragging it to the trash to unmount it. Or select it type type Comand-E to eject it. Once unmounted you just turn it off. When you turn it on, it should just mount it.

Click to expand...

I do use Command-E to unmount, but since my external drive doesn't have an on/off switch I can't just turn it on to have it mount. Not all external drives have on/off switches.

Uh. So the port powers the drive. OK.

Check out this link first and then this link for posible solutions.

xstep said:

Uh. So the port powers the drive. OK.

Check out this link first and then this link for posible solutions.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was looking for. I have yet to try it out, but thank you soooo much.

I agree with eric and D3v1lB0y - leaving it mounted won't cause it to wear out any faster. The fact that it's mounted doesn't interfere with the drive's ability to spin down or go to sleep when it's not used. It will quite happily sit there with the disks stopped despite it being mounted.

So I gave both of those scripts a go, and I can't seem to get them to work properly.