[xubuntu-users] Unable to unmount thumb drives

[John Alfred Nathanael Chee]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 01:58, raevol <raevol at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey all-
> I'm running xubuntu 9.10, and I've got an issue with thumb drives. I put in
> a drive, copy some files to it, wait for the file copy to finish, and then
> try to unmount it, in thunar or from the desktop icon. The menu I click
> "unmount" the right click menu freezes, and I get a notification that
> there's still data being written. That's all fine, but it never completes
> the writing. I never get a notification that the drive is safe to remove. I
> can right click again after a bit and try to mount the drive, but then I get
> a permissions error. If I unsafely remove the drive the files are not
> properly copied.
> I read something about the file system on the thumb drive needing to flush
> and that not being reflected in the file manager progress. That's all fine
> and good, but then how do I know when I can unmount the drive? Unmounting it
> too early after the copy seems to lock it up like this, and I haven't tried
> seeing if waiting for a long time will fix the problem.
> Any suggestions? Sorry if this is a pack of unclear rambling, ask and I will
> clarify as needed.
> -Mickey

If Thunar is consistently giving you trouble, it may be worthwhile to
try out some command line commands. If you're comfortable with
Terminal try this:

$ mount
Look at the list of mounted devices (first column followed by 'on')
and mount points (second column). Plug in the thumb drive.

$ mount
A new entry should be added to the list of mounted devices, for
example: /dev/sdb1 on /media/usbdrive
Do whatever you want to in Thunar, when you're done moving stuff around:

$ umount <whatever the mount point of the new entry was, in the
example: /media/usbdrive>

The umount command may take a while to complete depending on what
needs to be written to disk, but let it finish. When the prompt
displays again you can safely remove the drive. The drive should also
not be mounted anymore in Thunar.

-- 
Love in Jesus Christ, John Alfred Nathanael Chee
http://www.biblegateway.com/
http://www.sunsetpres.org/
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~chee/