Idea #10032: USB Flash drive light should turn off to indicate it is safe to remove the drive

Written by Knysliuxdata the 19 Jun 08 at 09:19. Category: Hardware support.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

We all want that it would work like in Windows. When USB device is safely removed, the light turns off.

As far as I understand "Unmount" is not "Safely remove" because it does not disconnect USB devices and I have no idea how to do that in Linux.

There must be an option to unmount or disconnect flash drives, mp3 etc.

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Aldo Nogueira wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 18:59

Can you explain this not-safely-remove thing a bit more?

Creak wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 19:29

When the usb device is unmounted, you *can* safely remove your usb key. You need to unmount a usb device to unsure all the writings are finished, not because it needs to be electrically disconnected.

Aldo Nogueira wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 21:30

That's exactly what I thought. I am still wondering what Knysliuxdata meant with "'Unmount' is not 'Safely remove'" and what it has to do with flash drive light.

drsaamah wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 21:52

When a drive is not "safely-removed" the operating system has not finished writing to the drive. This *usually* won't cause a problem, but you will notice issues if you use different operating systems. If you dont safely-remove a flash drive from a linux system, for example, and you put that same drive into a windows computer, windows won't be able to mount the drive. The same works from windows to linux.

fazillatheef wrote on the 20 Jun 08 at 04:58

normally usb keys turn off the light after you safely remove... In Windows XP,even after windows show that the device can safely be removed ,people usually look whether the usb key light is off before unplugging it.

uaneme wrote on the 20 Jun 08 at 04:59

tho it would be nice if that light was turned off after unmount, then its perfectly clear that it IS unmounted.

+1 that little light makes things clear.

Auzy wrote on the 20 Jun 08 at 05:09

Actually, Windows does have the ability to power down devices as well, so maybe thats what it is doing. That is what we should be in fact, because it means the devices should last a bit longer

fazillatheef wrote on the 20 Jun 08 at 05:13

but in linux the usb key light never turns off after unmounting the drive.. At first I used to wait till it turns off... but then I understood it will only turn off when you shutdown..

Linux has lot of problems in these area..
And I would say these need to be fixed before anything.. I am not against development of any eye candy or any thing like that... I am just saying if something is to be fixed then this would be the first...

Some problems like ...
Power consumption
Acpi problems,Hibernation and standby Problems --> i know that this is due to the closed policy of many vendors.. but this needs to be solved because people need their costly hardware to be safe when its using free software ...

And this can be only done by a company like Canonical...

Individuals have limits to do something over this matter and thats why it has not happened yet.

Another thing to be done is internet connectivity .. And I am very happy that is happening.. (interpid ibex)

FuturePilot wrote on the 20 Jun 08 at 06:01

AFAIK Windows stopped turning the light off with Vista. It no longer does that.

madjr wrote on the 20 Jun 08 at 06:41

The light thing is not a real problem.

it's safe to remove the USB after unmounting it.

but yes i understand what you mean.

saftaplan wrote on the 20 Jun 08 at 07:20

I think this has got to do with turning off the power for the device, which is a good thing to do after unmounting. Not only for USB Flash drives, but also for external hard drives, for example. KDE does this, Gnome does not (I have a very noisy external hard drive so I can hear it when it turns off). I don't see a reason why the device still needs power after unmounting.

hlustik wrote on the 15 Jul 08 at 11:06

for example the mobile phones from nokia are displaying a message like:"It is now save to unplug the device" on the phonedisplay also a little audio-beep is played

under KDE and Windows it works but not under GNOME

for me this is not a problem

but this would be a showstopper for someone who is not so firm with linux

hlustik wrote on the 15 Jul 08 at 11:17

PS: if the phone gets unmounted via gnome and afterwards unpluged it displays the following message: "There is a possibility that Data got lost. Transfers should be stopped before unplugging the device."

i think switching of the usb device when you use the contextmenu option "save-remove" or "unmount" would be a great improvement for this.

if some users would need a unmounted device which is not turned of he can allways take the approach over the command line via 'sudo unmount'

fmorel90 wrote on the 6 Aug 08 at 21:29

The light turning off depends on the flash drive. My pocket media drive (hard drive with usb connection)'s turns off only when it's being written to. Also sometimes I unmount my mp3 player but leave it charging (i'm paranoid about my filesystems), so we can't cut off power to usb devices.

c0p3rn1c wrote on the 23 Aug 08 at 14:26

sudo eject /dev/sdc1

Knysliuxdata wrote on the 27 Aug 08 at 16:32

To fmorel90
When I "Safely Remove" my mp4 player on Windows the picture changes to indicate, that it charges itself (as opposed to one that shows connection to PC). XP does something other than just cutting off the power. But Gnome does not.

To c0p3rn1c
How to know which device is the one that I want to eject?
Sorry, I am quiet new here :)
Now I get
"eject: unable to find or open device for: `/dev/sdc1'"

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