Different bevahiour by USB falsh drives formatted in ext3/4 and Windows' formats

[Dave Woyciesjes]

Basil Chupin wrote:
> I noticed this for a while but after doing this today to confirm my 
> observations, I thought I would mention this because there was some 
> discussion recently about how to properly remove an USB flash disc from 
> Ubuntu (at least 10.04 which I am now using). The same applies, BTW, to 
> an external USB HD.
> 
> When the device is plugged in, or switched on in the case of the HD, the 
> appropriate icon appears on the workspace (desktop) and nautilus runs 
> and shows the contents of the device. All normal. In nautilus the device 
> shows up in the left-hand-most panel with a pyramid-looking "up pointer" 
> at the end of the device name.
> 
> However, as you know, when it comes to 'disconnecting' such a device, 
> one has to "Safely remove" the device and not simply "Eject" it or just 
> pull it out of the connection on the computer (or switch off the 
> external USB HD).
> 
> If the device is formatted in ext3/4 then you can right-click on the 
> *icon on the workspace* and select "Safely remove" - and watch the light 
> on the flash disc or the HD if you want to ensure that any unwritten 
> data has been written to the device and the device can then be "removed" 
> from the system.
> 
> However, if the device has been formatted in FAT/ntfs then using the 
> above method results in an error message stating that the device cannot 
> be accessed (or some such - I'm working from memory). What you need to 
> do is to either go to Places>(device) which will start nautilus or to 
> nautilus itself and use the "up pointer" at the end of the device name 
> to Safely Remove the device.
> 
	Sorry to burst your bubble, Basil, but all of my FAT32 USB drive, and 
the 2 partition FAT32/NTFS USB HDD all have the Safely Remove option; 
which works correctly. On Ubuntu 10.4...
	Maybe you standing on your head?

-- 
--- Dave Woyciesjes
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