It’s interesting how computer terminology comes and goes. Does your Mac boot up? Why does the iPhone or iPad merely start up?

Back in the day we would mount a storage device connected to our Macs or PCs. These days we merely connect devices. Hence the Mac utility app Mountain is appropriately named for those users who still use the term mount. What does Mountain mount?

What’s In A Name?

Simply put, Mountain lets Mac users manage connected storage volumes (USB disks, FireWire disks, external disk drives, connected servers– anything mounted).

What makes Mountain unique is how it works for Macs that have many connected storage devices. It lives in the Menubar so a click gets you access to everything you need.

That includes both ejecting an external volume without using the Mac’s Finder eject button, and remount external volumes without plugging in the cable (again).

Another advantage of Mountain is the option to connect to a server. It keeps a list of recently mounted servers so getting one back is little more than a click to the Menubar.

Preferences are aplenty as well with many options for both volumes and the Menubar menu.

Mountain can be launched when the Mac starts up, and the pop down menu gives you the option to unmount everything that’s connected, or to mount everything that’s connected but not mounted. If you’re like me and have a Mac notebook with external disk storage you’ll appreciate how useful that is.

If your Mac goes to sleep volumes and servers can be remounted (connected) automatically, too. And, notifications are built in so Mountain uses Growl or Notification Center to let you know when volumes are available or can be unplugged. Power users will appreciated the keyboard shortcuts which eliminate the need to hit the Menubar as often.

The only caveat I have is that some external DVDs would not mount all the time, as well as some older external USB disks (which probably should have been retired years ago). Otherwise, there’s nothing quite like Mountain, but I would like to see a scheduled mount or unmount option.