I use a 30 GB video iPod (with a broken screen) as an external HD to keep all my backups rsync'ed and all and seem to be having a problem safely ejecting it sometimes. Normally, when I right click on the iPod icon (or any USB device) on the desktop, it gives me the option to "Safely Remove". More often than not, after writing to the disk, I no longer have that option.

Is it safe to remove a USB device without 'Safely Remove'ing it? If not, what do I do when I don't have the option, simply 'umount /dev/sdb' it? I know back in Winblows there was an option to turn off disk caching so that you could use quick removal, but I dunno if (K)ubuntu has/needs something similar.

- mertle

EDIT: BTW, the iPod has been formatted FAT32 so I can use it both in Windows and Linux, if that makes any difference.

Unmounting the device will flush the write cache.