Should the USB subsystem unmount a disk when disconnected?

[Robin Laing]

Welty, Richard wrote:
> Doug P writes:
> 
>>Also, if I pull the USB disk out withoug unmounting it, the device does 
>>not unmount and remove the mountpoint. Now if I plug it back in it 
>>creates a second mount point.  Is this the desired behavior?  Shouldn't 
>>the disk unmount and the mountpoint go away.
> 
> 
> well, in general it's kind of iffy to pull a USB memory device out without
> unmounting first (on any OS). flash isn't fast stuff, and you run the risk
> of having OS cache that hasn't been flushed. many operating systems will
> warn you if they catch you unpluging w/o unmounting first (i've not tried
> this with a recent FC distribution, but from your post, i gather that you
> can unplug without getting lectured, which is unfortunate.)
> 
> i'm still trying to teach my wife to eject the CF card before taking it
> out of the sandrive, but it's slow going...
> 
> richard
> 

I removed my camera yesterday by accident and I never got a message.

It is bad to remove a USB device without mounting and if you look at 
teh device when you unmount it, many times you will see that it is 
being accessed.  Yes, this even occurs in Windows.