If you use a lot of external drives or thumb drives, you can update your right-click menu so that it includes an option to safely eject the drive. This is a lot quicker than the usual process of safely ejecting external drives. Here's how to do this in Vista.

- Open up the registry editor (Start -> Run -> regedit).

- In the left pane, navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT + Directory + Background + shell.

- Right-click on the shell folder and select New > Key and then give it the name you want to show up in your right-click menu. I called mine Eject Drive.

- You'll then right-click on your new entry and select New > Key and call it command.

- Click (not right-click) on the commandentry and then look in the right-hand pane. You'll see an entry called (Default). Double-click on this entry and change the value to RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

That should be it. Once you save your changes you should then be able to right-click on your desktop and your new entry should show up. When you select it it'll bring up the window that allow you to safely remove hardware.