Unmount USB drive? Or eject? Or even savely remove?

[vlc]

Hi *,

If I want to remove an USB drive from my PC, Gnome gives me three options in the desktop icon's context menu: Unmount, Eject and Savely Remove Drive.

Does anyone know what the differences are between these three options?

Thanks a lot in advance!

[Janneman27]

I have no idea! But I think canonical should try and integrate these three things. I've also noticed that there are three options and I feel it is silly, confusing and unnecessary.

I love the improvements made in Karmic, but I hope that with 10.04 they will improve these little annoyances. I really believe that these small things are keeping lots of Windows user away from Ubuntu and that if these were fixed, the UI would feel like a true alternative to even the most hardcore of Win fans.

[vlc]

I think I found an explanation:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598690#c5

Resuming:

Unmount if you only want to unmount the drive but not remove it, e.g. to check the disk for errors
Eject for CDs/DVDs to, well, eject them.
Savely remove for USB drives et al. But there seems to be a bug with internal card readers. When savely removing a card from the card reader, the card cannot be mounted any more without reboot. Using Eject in this case works well.


Cheers!

[sabre2th]

I think I found an explanation:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598690#c5

Resuming:

Unmount if you only want to unmount the drive but not remove it, e.g. to check the disk for errors
Eject for CDs/DVDs to, well, eject them.
Savely remove for USB drives et al. But there seems to be a bug with internal card readers. When savely removing a card from the card reader, the card cannot be mounted any more without reboot. Using Eject in this case works well.


Cheers!
That makes sense, but what exactly is the difference between 'Unmount' and 'Safely Remove'? It still seems redundant to me for anyone that knows what 'unmount' is.

[bmuluu]

That makes sense, but what exactly is the difference between 'Unmount' and 'Safely Remove'? It still seems redundant to me for anyone that knows what 'unmount' is.

Well, unmounting has to do with removing a device's filesystem from its mount-point on the computer's file system usually in /media/ or /mnt/.
You can unmount a device so as to format it, or check it for errors.
The mount point in /media/ ceases to exist but the device is still listed in /dev/

To safely remove a device implies it is going to be unmounted and won't be available as a device connected to the computer until it is plugged in again.

If you plug a flash drive into a USB port, its filesystem will be mounted on your filesystem. My mount point is /media/

With a flash disk plugged in:

ls /dev/sd*returns
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1

/dev/sdb is the flash drive

with the flash drive unmounted,

ls /dev/sd*still returns:
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1


yet if it is safely removed:

ls /dev/sd* returns:
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3

[yossell]

Thanks - I'd wondered about that too, and now I think I understand.

[blur xc]

Well, unmounting has to do with removing a device's filesystem from its mount-point on the computer's file system usually in /media/ or /mnt/.
You can unmount a device so as to format it, or check it for errors.
The mount point in /media/ ceases to exist but the device is still listed in /dev/

To safely remove a device implies it is going to be unmounted and won't be available as a device connected to the computer until it is plugged in again.

If you plug a flash drive into a USB port, its filesystem will be mounted on your filesystem. My mount point is /media/

With a flash disk plugged in:

ls /dev/sd*returns
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1

/dev/sdb is the flash drive

with the flash drive unmounted,

ls /dev/sd*still returns:
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1


yet if it is safely removed:

ls /dev/sd* returns:
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3

Ok, the difference between unmounting and safely removing makes sense to me. But what does ejecting do to a usb device?

Also, I routinely unmount from the command line, it's the best and safest way (for me) to make sure the device can be removed safely, but how do you do the others from the command line?

Thanks,
BM

[vlc]

Ok, the difference between unmounting and safely removing makes sense to me. But what does ejecting do to a usb device?


I do see a difference between Eject and Savely remove with my internal card reader. When using Savely remove I cannot mount the card any more without a reboot. When choosing Eject, the card is automatically mounted again when inserted.

But I don't have any idea if USB devices are treated differently by Eject and Savely remove.

[Pogeymanz]

Just to clarify, this sounds like a Gnome problem and not Ubuntu's fault. Can someone correct me on that?

If I were you, I would always just use 'eject.' To be honest, if it is unmounted, there shouldn't be any reason that removing it is unsafe. The Linux kernel doesn't know the difference between USBs and CDs and Hard drives. Storage is either mounted- so you can read and write to it, or it isn't mounted- so you can't do anything to it. If you can't read or write to something, I can't imagine that unplugging it will do any damage.

[vlc]

Just to clarify, this sounds like a Gnome problem and not Ubuntu's fault.

I agree. Looks more like a Gnome-specific issue.


If I were you, I would always just use 'eject.'

This is actually exactly what I'm doing.

Cheers!