safely remove USB hard drive

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 13:48 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
> g wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > ?ukasz Jagie??o wrote:
> >> Maybe not better, because it's sync when you umount, but when you
> >> hot-plug on/off usb sync is faster and easier.
> > 
> > i can not say for usb drives, etc, but i do know that i unmounted a floppy
> > drive one time and even tho knoq showed files were written to disk. later,
> > when disk was mount to retrieve files, they were not there.
> > 
> > so, any time before i unmount anything, i give a couple syncs to ensure
> > that data is written.
> > 
> > 
> > - --
> > 
> > tc,hago.
> > 
> > g
> 
> There was a bug in Fedora that would remove the icon from the desktop 
> while the device was still syncing.  I had a USB device that didn't have 
> any lights on it and I totally corrupted the FS when this occurred.
> 
> It could have been the same bug for the floppy as well.  I only tested 
> on USB.

That's interesting. Once or twice I removed a pendrive after the icon
went away, only to get a beep from the system. Luckily I didn't lose any
data, and it seems to have been fixed now, but it's always nice to have
an explanation for these things.

poc