Section 8.7. Disks | Switching to the Mac[c] The Missing Manual

8.7. Disks

Floppy drives disappeared from Macs beginning in 1997and these days, they're disappearing from Windows PCs, too.

If you miss having a floppy drive, you can always buy a USB-based one for your Mac. In the meantime, there are all kinds of other disks you can connect to a Mac these days: FireWire (IEEE 1394) external hard drives, iPods, USB flash drives, and so on.

When you insert any kind of disk, its icon shows up on the right side of the screen; there's no My Computer icon to open when you want to find the inserted disk's icon. Similarly, no icon for a drive appears if there's no disc in it. If you've used only Windows, this behavior may throw you at first.

Note: You can use Mac OS X like Windows if you choose. To open a single window containing icons of all currently inserted disks, choose Go

Computer. To complete the illusion that youre running Windows, you can even tell Mac OS X not to put disk icons on the desktop at all. Just choose Finder

Preferences

General and turn off the three top checkboxesHard disks," "CDs, DVDs, and iPods" and "Connected servers." They'll no longer appear on the desktoponly in your Computer window.

To remove a disk from your Mac, use one of these methods :

Drag its icon onto the Trash icon . For years , this technique has confused and frightened first-time Mac users. Their typical reaction: "Doesn't the Trash mean delete? " Yes, but only when you drag document or folder icons therenot disk icons. Dragging disk icons onto the Trash (at the right end of the Dock) makes the Mac spit them out.

Actually, all you can really do is intend to drag it onto the Trash can. The instant you begin dragging a disk icon, the Trash icon on the Dock changes form, as though to reassure the novice that it will merely eject a disk icon, not erase it. As you drag, the wastebasket icon turns into a giant- sized logo (which matches the symbol on the upper-rightmost key of current Mac keyboards).

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
The Eject Button That Doesn't

When I push the Eject button on my keyboard (or on my CD-ROM drawer ), how come the CD doesn't come out?

There might be two things going on. First of all, to prevent accidental pushings, the key on the modern Mac keyboard is designed to work only when you hold it down steadily for a second or two. Just tapping it doesn't work.

Second, remember that once you've inserted a CD, DVD, or Zip disk, the Mac won't let go unless you eject it in one of the official ways. On Mac models with a CD tray, pushing the button on the CD-ROM door opens the drawer only when it's empty . If there's a disc in it, you can push that button till doomsday, but the Mac will simply ignore you.

That behavior especially confuses people who are used to working with Windows. (On a Windows PC, pushing the CD button does indeed eject the disc.) On the Mac, pushing the CD-door button ejects an inserted disc only when the disc wasn't seated properly (or when the disk drive's driver software isn't installed), and the disc's icon never did appear onscreen.

The key on the modern Mac keyboard, however, isn't so fussy. It pops out whatever CD or DVD is in the drive.

Finally, if a CD or DVD won't come out at all (and its icon doesn't show up on the desktop), restart the Mac. When the computer is finished loading, it will either recognize the disc or generate an error message containing an Eject button. (Most drives also feature a tiny pinhole in or around the slot. Inserting a straightened paper clip, slowly and firmly, will also make the disc pop out.) Keeping the mouse button pressed as the Mac restarts also does the trick, as well.

Press the /F12 key on your keyboard . Recent Mac keyboards, both on laptops and desktops, have a special Eject key ( ) in the upper-right corner; on older Macs, you use the F12 key instead (if this conflicts with your Dashboard keystroke, see Section 4.3.2). Either way, hold it down for a moment to make a CD or DVD pop out.
Highlight the disk icon, and then choose File "Eject [the disks name ]," or press -E . The disk now pops out.
Control-click or right-click the disk icon . Choose "Eject [the disk's name]" from the contextual menu.

8.7.1. Startup Disks

When you turn the Mac on, it hunts for a startup disk that is, a disk containing a copy of Mac OS X. And, as you know, a computer without an operating system is like a machine that's had a lobotomy.

8.7.1.1. Selecting a startup disk

It's perfectly possible to have more than one startup disk simultaneously attached to your Mac. Some veteran Mac fans deliberately create other startup diskson burnable DVDs, for exampleso that they can easily start the Mac up from a backup startup disk, or a different version of the OS.

Figure 8-10. In the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences, the currently selected diskthe one that will be "in force" the next time the machine starts upis always highlighted. You see the Mac OS X version number and the name of the drive it's on, but not its actual nameuntil you point to an icon without clicking.

Only one System folder can be operational at a time, though. So how does the Mac know which to use as its startup disk? You make your selection in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences (Figure 8-10). Use it to specify which disk you want the Mac to start up from the next time you turn it on.

8.7.2. Erasing, Formatting, and Initializing

When you want to erase a disk (such as a CD-RW disc) in Mac OS X, use Disk Utility, which is located in your Applications Utilities folder.

You can use this program to erase, repair, or subdivide ( partition ) a hard drive, or any other kind of disk.

To erase a CD-RW or DVD-RW disc, open Disk Utility, click the Erase tab, click the name of the CD (in the left-side list), and click the Erase button.