And another issue from my point of view that Norbert forgot to mention -
when your external hard drive has several partitions (which I think is
quite common nowadays, with multi-TB sizes), there is no more an option to
remove the whole device with a single action. This used to be the "safely
remove drive" option.

Instead, one has to right-click -> eject every partition on it (quite
cumbersome for my 4 partitions, especially since I have to discern them by
name from my internal HD partitions used for Windows).

On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Norbert <email address hidden>wrote:

> Hello, Sebastien!
>
> I’ll summarize my posts here.
>
> My main linux distro is Ubuntu 12.04 and I think that Ubuntu is the best
> distro and will fix the bug #1 soon :)
>
> In Ubuntu 12.04, Gentoo stable, Debian 6 and Debian 7 safely remove
> works for both USB-flash and USB-HDD.
>
> In Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04 (even with Gnome 3.8 from ppa);  OpenSuse 12.3
> and Tumbleweed; Fedora 18 and 19; Sabayon 11 safely remove does not
> exist or does not work as before.
>
> I did some tests at my free time for Ubuntu and linux community. It
> seems that this bug is not Ubuntu-oriented, it is distro-wide.
>
> We have 94 users affected by this bug here (they does not make as much
> buzz as me) and some in other bug-trackers.
>
>
> I tested 4 USB-flashes and 1 USB-HDD on different PCs and distros (see my
> table at Google Docs for product names and USB VIDs and PIDs -
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ao5e713Ig9g_dEtqbmhOVnJuVmRmOEx1QXpMSncwbEE#gid=0).
>
> 1. USB flashes
> I understand that removing unmounted (and synced) flash is quite safely
> operation. But in 12.04 (and other distros) flash led switched off after
> Safely remove. For me it is more comfortable to remove flash which LED is
> switched off.
>
> In Ubuntu 13.04 I see Safely remove entry for only one my USB flash
> (Kingston DataTraveller G2 16 GB), and it works as expected (after
> pressing Safely remove LED on flash switched off, flash is removed from
> lsusb, fdisk -l and gnome-disks).
>
> For 3 other flashes I see only Eject option. After pressing Eject LED on
> flash is switced on, flash is removed from fdisk -l, but still exists in
> lsusb and gnome-disks). After Eject I can not switch USB-flash manually
> (by udisks --detach).
>
> 2. USB HDDs
> In Ubuntu 13.04 there is no way to spin down USB-HDD from GUI. I can spin
> down HDD only from console with udisks --detach. There is a Safely remove
> option in Nautilus window, but it does not spin down the drive. It removes
> drive from lsusb, fdisk -l and gnome-disks, but plates are rotating. I
> understand that SATA HDD are hot-swappable, but it’s not comfortable for me
> to remove rotating hard-drive.
>
> So I hope that convenient safely remove will be back in next releases of
> major distros and Ubuntu.
>
> I prefer LTS versions of Ubuntu - I use 12.04, and safely remove works in
> it as I expect.
> If you does not believe my results - you can repeat these tests by
> yourself.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (1081716).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1067876
>
> Title:
>   Missing "Safely Remove Drive" option from Quicklists. Only have
>   "Eject".
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/gvfs/+bug/1067876/+subscriptions
>