Q&A: MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions sent in by our readers.

This week readers had questions about an unexpected occurrence of the VIP mailbox in OS X mail, networked storage drives that result in different authentication prompts, and managing user accounts on a secondary hard drive in a MacBook Pro.

I welcome contributions from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Banishing the VIP mailbox in OS X Mail
MacFixIt reader Julie asks:

How do I delete the VIP folder in OS X Mail? I somehow created it by accident!

Answer:
You can remove it by right-clicking (control-click) each person in the VIP folder and choosing to remove them from it. When you do this for all people in the folder, the VIP mailbox should no longer be present in the sidebar.

Question: Networked drives showing different authentication behaviors
MacFixIt reader Patrick asks:

I'm having a problem connecting to a network drive. One drive asks me to authenticate, one doesn't. Any suggestions?

Answer:
Authentication for networked drives is managed by the remote computer (be it a NAS device like Apple's Time Capsule, or a PC system). This means that if one drive requires a password and another does not, then you will need to check each system's authentication settings for access to the shared folder.

Alternatively, you can save the required credentials to your system's keychain by checking the box to do so when prompted to log in. After doing this, you should get seamless access to that shared folder.

Question: Managing user accounts on dual hard drives on a MacBook Pro
MacFixIt reader Ric asks:

What is the best procedure when someone reformats a MacBook Pro with SSD & HDD? Shows as 2 different drives. I manually moved User data to HDD and went to the System Preferences > Accounts, and under Advanced Options reset User Home directory to the new location. Is this best practice?

Answer:
By default the MacBook Pro will only have one internal drive. If someone has added another in the optical drive bay, then that will be the only way a second physical drive is available. As for moving the user account, the best practice is to keep it on the boot drive, but if you want to move the drive to a new partition then first moving the folder and then adjusting the account settings as you did is the way to go.

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or e-mail us!
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.