Just discovered this small but very handy application that provides a quick way to unmount external peripherals such as usb pendrives, cd/dvd, external hard disks and so on. Its a simple menu that appears in the notification area whenever a mountable device is connected. This makes it easy to eject hard drives, usb pendrives ..etc, instead of doing it the hard way: right-clicking on the device and the selecting eject(ipod) or unmount (hard drives).

You can get the latest download from the author’s page on https://launchpad.net/ejecter/+download

The download is a source package, so you will have to compile and the install it. According to the Author’s  Install File, “Ejecter uses Waf to build and install. It is included within Ejecter package, so you do not need to install anything strange”.

To install just run:

1) ./waf configure

This checks if your system has the required tools
( if you want to specify a particular prefix for Ejecter install pass it as an argument:
./waf configure –prefix=/usr )
Same as “./configure” in autotools-based projects

2) ./waf

This launches the Vala compiler, producing the binary
Same as “make” in autotools-based projects

3) ./waf install

This actually installs the files on your system, an operation for which you could need
root (super-user) privileges. In this case see “sudo” or “su” in the documentation
of your system.
Same as “make install” in autotools-based projects

Once installed, just run “ejecter” from the command-line or the run dialog (often you can get it by pressing ALT+F2). It could be useful to add ejecter to the programs that are automatically started at login.
Ejecter will run in background, showing an icon in your system-tray (or notification area) when one or more external media and devices are connected to your system.

If you are on a Ubuntu System, just go System > Preferences > Sessions, click “ADD” and then type Ejecter as the “Name” and “Command” and you’re done . So next time you boot up your computer, Ejecter starts up automatically.

Below is a screen-shot of Ejecter in action on my pc.