Is there a better way to "safely" shut down external USB / Firewire hard-drives (and thumbdrives) other than just unmounting them and turning them off? In Windows there is a "safely remove hardware" icon in the systray. I'm not sure exactly what it does but it seems to do something that Linux isn't doing. When I plug in my USB thumbdrive, it has an LED on it that will blink to let you know the O/S recognizes it. In Windows, when I safely remove the USB thumbdrive via the systray, the LED stops blinking and I unplug it. In Linux, when I unmount the USB thumbdrive, the LED keeps blinking.

When I unmount my external USB hard-drives and power them down, I get a bunch of errors in my syslog (see below). So is there a way to tell Linux to safely remove the hardware?

Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: usb.c: USB disconnect on device 00:02.2-3 address 2
Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: Device 08:00 not ready.
Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: Device 08:00 not ready.
Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: Device 08:00 not ready.
Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: Device 08:00 not ready.
Dec 11 19:00:22 fedora kernel: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
[ cut ] (it goes on)

It's very unlikely that Linux kernel will fry your USB devices. In Windows, devices are started at the bootup (that's why there's a waittime and maybe blinking or beeping of devices) and they are mounted and 'online' all the time, even when you aren't using them. It means that if someone breaks in your computer, it will be able to control your mounted device because there aren't even permissions for them. I'm not a Windows code expert, but in my case (an ADSL Speedtouch USB modem) what Windows does is completely shut down the USB power source for that location so it really turns off the device. In Linux, mounting and unmounting works only for filesystems so Modems and other devices won't be affected by 'mount'. Nevertheless, the error that you are getting in syslog seems to be that some application is looking for the device and it isn't found, it doesn't mean that there's a failure in the USB shutdown or something. Also, when you are initing some devices you might get timeout advices or other errors that are completely harmless, they just mean that the process is lasting more than the expected (i.e. a connection with an ISP provider might be more or less lengthy depending on the line conditions of an xDSL suscriber, but the drivers are told that process might last only some seconds, so it 'timeouts')

You are looking for a USB module hacker answer. He/She can tell you what does the USB module exactly and what it's really happening to your hardware.

I was always told that when Windows "safely shut down" and "safely shut down devices" it was "locking" the drives in some way. I don't exactly know what that means in technical terms, but the idea was that it would make the computer "safe" to transport since if you just powered down the drives could bounce around or something and cause damage.

Probably doesn't help at all... but that's my two cents.

I've wondered about that with my USB flash drive too. Windows sends a power down signal to USB/firewire storage devices when you unmount them (disconnect from drive letter). All modern hard drives auto-park, so I wouldn't worry about the heads skipping across the platters, like in the old days when you had to manually park them But I've heard flash mem is sensitive to power fluctuations, so unplugging my pen drive hot kind of worries me, since it gets its power through the USB connection, unlike external hard disk enclosures. Linux hasn't fried anything yet, though.