Ubuntu
nautilus package

  1. Bug #32643
  2. Comment #38

Comment 38 for bug 32643

Revision history for this message
John Dong (jdong) wrote : Re: [Bug 32643] Failure to 'get it'.

Charles,

The trade-off for mounting USB devices sync would be faster wear and tear on
the drive, along with applications hanging for longer periods of time while
trying to write data.

Even operating systems that mount sync (Linux OR Windows or whatever) do not
make it safe to yank out USB devices. That still leaves the possible of
corrupted filesystem metadata structures -- I've interned at the IT desk for
a large company before and I've personally seen cases (multiple) on windows
XP where FAT32 thumb drives were unrecoverably corrupted due to improper
removal.

Mounting 'sync' does exactly what XP tells you: Optimize for quick removal.
In other words, the "unmounting" (safely remove hardware) option executes
faster, but you still have to do it. Never ever is it safe to yank thumb
drives out of systems -- windows or linux. Just because you got away with it
before doesn't make it safe!