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Given the increasing popularity of solid-state drives, with theirsmaller-than-hard-drive capacities, and the prevalence ofdrive-hogging media files, sometimes it feels like we re back tothe days when we constantly had to worry about filling up ourdrives. Last November, I reviewed FreeSpace , a nifty app that displays, right in the menu bar, the bootvolume s free space, with a drop-down menu displaying the freespace on every other mounted volume, organized by type (internal,external, network, disk image, and so on). It also gives you quickaccess to any mounted volume choose one from the menu to open itin the Finder and it s the easiest way to unmounted connectedvolumes, thanks to the little eject button next to each volume inthe menu. (A nice touch: The FreeSpace icon blinks to let you knowwhen the volume has successfully unmounted.) There s even an EjectAll command to unmount everything but internal drives with a click. I continue to use FreeSpace regularly, and it earned an honorable mention on my 2011 favorite-Gems list. The developer just released FreeSpace 1.1 ( Mac App Store link ), and the new version is considerably improved, addressing anumber of my criticisms while adding even more useful features. For example, if a connected drive had multiple partitions, ejectingone using the original FreeSpace would automatically unmount all of them. In version 1.1, you can Option+click any partition tounmount just that partition, leaving the others on that drivemounted. I also noted in my original review that unlike previousGem Space Control , FreeSpace wouldn t alert you if a particular volume was gettingtight on space. In the new version, FreeSpace automaticallyhighlights any drive with less than 200MB of free space. Thisfeature isn t as powerful as Space Control s customizable alerts,but it s a nice improvement. Another complaint was that although you could choose any internalvolume for FreeSpace s menu-bar display, you couldn t choose anexternal or network volume. FreeSpace 1.1 lets you choose anyconnected volume for its menu-bar display just move the mouse tothe left of the volume name and click the little arrow button thatappears. And if you choose a removable volume, FreeSpace remembersthat selection when you unmount the volume, the display reverts tothe boot volume, but once you mount the removable volume again,FreeSpace switches back to it. With FreeSpace 1.0, you couldn t customize the menu display to,for example, show just a disk icon in order to conserve menu-barspace. Version 1.1 offers a number of options for choosing whatgets displayed in the menu bar: It can display just a drive icon orthat icon plus the available free space, and for the latter, youcan choose whether to display the free space as an integer or with1, 2, or 3 decimal places, and whether or not to display units (KB,MB, GB, or TB). Other new features let you eject internal drives (except for theboot volume, of course) from the menu, and sort volumes withingroups by name, free space, or mount time. Multiple network shareson a single server or host are now grouped together in the menu,and if a drive has multiple partitions, moving the pointer over anyone partition s eject button highlights the eject buttons for allthose partitions, making it clear which volumes are part of thesame drive. These changes make FreeSpace even more useful and, for those withcrowded menu bars, a more-responsible menu-bar citizen. It remainsmy favorite current utility for keeping an eye on your free drivespace, as well as for quickly accessing and unmounting volumes. Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to yourInbox. You can also follow Mac Gems on Twitter . The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Surveillance Camera Recorder Manufacturer , HDD Mobile DVR, and more. For more , please visit SD Mobile DVR today!
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