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I noticed that with 14.04, the option "safely remove" is no longer there with external HDDs or flash drives.

It just says "eject" now.

Is eject and safely remove now consolidated into one option, making "eject" safe to use?

Dan
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user279652
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2 Answers2

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For flash drives, "eject" and "safely remove" have always been synonymous.

The "eject" and "safely remove" options only have a different effect on drives with a mechanical ejection mechanism like CD or DVD drives connected via USB.

The reason why both options appeared on previous version was a technical limitation. If I understand correctly, it's that the majority of USB flash drives "pretend" to have an eject mechanism even when they don't, and it doesn't do anything.

Ubuntu has now simplified the two options down to one, at least for USB flash drives. It looks as if they've found a way around the issues mentioned in this bug.

thomasrutter
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    I don't agree with you! I have noticed that when you click on eject the drive is only unmounted but it is not powered down the LED on the USB drive keeps blinking while when I say safely remove the Drive is powered down and LED stops blinking. So safely remove and eject are two different functions and hence I think safely remove option must be added in ubuntu 14.04! – Null pointer May 22 '14 at 14:56
  • On which OS do you notice these two separate functions have separate effects - a previous Ubuntu version? I was under the impression that even in previous Ubuntu versions the two had the same effect. At any rate, I don't see any reason to essentially give people a choice of whether the LED should remain on or off. It puts out only a tiny amount of light and consumes negligible energy. – thomasrutter May 23 '14 at 09:13
  • on ubuntu 12.04! Have a look at this http://www.askubuntu.com/questions/381108/safely-remove-using-command-line – Null pointer May 23 '14 at 09:53
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You can still "Safely Remove" but you have to open the "Disk Utility" app to accomplish it.

First you should "Eject" the drive. Then you would open the Disk Utility app and select "Safe Removal: power down the drive so it can be removed."

The issue with having the Safely Remove option in the context menu is that you generally don't want to power down devices that are INTERNAL; you only want to "eject" them. And the OS doesn't know if a device is internal/external. (If you "Safely Remove" an INTERNAL device, you will not have access to that device again until after doing a reboot. You can regain access to an EXTERNAL device by replugging it back in).

Truthfully, I don't think it harms an external device at all to simply Eject and then pull it out. The Safely Remove option powers down the device via the OS. Just pulling the device out (after ejecting) powers down the device cause you pulled it away from its power supply. They both accomplish the same end as I understand it. So there is no harm AFAIK to just Ejecting and then pulling out your external drive/s.

Brian
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  • "the OS doesn't know if a device is internal/external" - it does know if a device is attached via USB vs directly on the SATA bus, and that is a pretty strong indication. In this case we're talking about USB connected drives. "Eject" is sufficient to safely remove a drive as it has the effect of unmounting and flushing (if necessary) the drive prior to calling eject, the same actions that safely remove did in terms of avoiding data loss. Safely remove is theoretically supposed to also put the device into standby mode but I don't think Linux/Ubuntu actually did that. – thomasrutter May 11 '14 at 15:52