Setting Up Disk Drives, Partitions, and Volumes
Disk drives come in all shapes and sizes, from large and fast fixed internal devices, to externally connected FireWire drives, iPods, and even USBbased devices like the iPod shuffle, which can serve as a disk drive. Regardless of the connection method, all disk drives are formatted into software partitions called volumes. To ensure data is preserved and the file system is properly updated, mounted volumes on removable media must be ejected before the removable device is disconnected.