Copying Data To USB Flash Drive

[Colin Law]

On 25 February 2014 09:21, Sajan Parikh <sajan at parikh.io> wrote:
> I've been using Ubuntu for years now, but have only recently started to use
> USB flash drives for larger files.  Usually things are sync'd on my NAS.
>
> I've noticed when I copy about 5GB of data, the transfer progress window
> shows that it goes really fast and is complete.  However, when I go to eject
> the drive, I get the message, "Don't Unplug...".
>
> I then have to wait an absurdly long, unpredictable time before the message
> "You can unplug...".
>
> I assume it's writing to some sort of buffer at first, and only flushing to
> disk when I try to eject.
>
> Is there any way for me to write directly to the disk, or at least get some
> sort of progress on when I can **actually** unplug my drive?

It is not that it is waiting to start before you ask to eject the
device but that the write to flash has not yet completed, so you must
keep the power on the device till it is finished.  When you say
absurdly long, note that it can take 10 minutes or more to write 5GB,
depending on the speed of the flash.  If the device you are using was
previously much quicker then it is possible that the flash is failing.
 Also it may take longer if you are deleting large amounts of data
prior to the write and/or there is not much space left on the device.

Colin