Actually, you have to unmount all partitions first to avoid filesystem corruption. That's the one thing that is absolutely critical.
After that, yes, remove power if you can. However the reason why Gnome is treating this bug as Won't Fix is because there are too many device types that are unsafe to power down. Devices like optical drives and card readers that look like internal devices to you, but to the OS are USB devices in some cases. So Linux thinks they're safe to power down (which you can't recover from without rebooting). -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gvfs in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1067876 Title: [quantal] Missing "Safely Remove Drive" and "Eject" options from Quicklists. Only have "Unmount". Status in GVFS: New Status in Unity: Invalid Status in “gvfs” package in Ubuntu: Invalid Status in “udisks2” package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix Bug description: In Ubuntu 12.04, I could right-click on my usb-external-harddrive's Unity-Task-Bar icon (launcher icon) and select "Safely Remove". Upon doing this, the icon would disappear and I would proceed in unplugging my external hard drive. However, since upgrading to Ubuntu 12.10, this option is no longer available in the context menus (Quicklists) for external drives. Instead, all I see is "Unmount", and after clicking "Unmount" the icon remains on the task-bar (launcher) and no indication is given that would imply that the unmount occurred successfully. The intent of this report is to bring back the "Safely Remove" option which (by making the icon disappear after selected) indicates that you may now safely removal your USB external hard drive (by unplugging its usb connector). ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10 Package: unity 6.8.0-0ubuntu2 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5 Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64 NonfreeKernelModules: wl ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu3 Architecture: amd64 CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,vpswitch,snap,mousepoll,resize,place,move,wall,grid,regex,imgpng,session,gnomecompat,animation,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,workarounds,scale,expo,ezoom,unityshell] Date: Wed Oct 17 14:55:17 2012 InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425) ProcEnviron: TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, no user) XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set> LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: unity UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-04 (13 days ago) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gvfs/+bug/1067876/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
