Linux Mint 18 problem with safely remove USB

John D K -

I faced problem with my desktop machine running on Linux Mint 18: In case of safely remove Drive - all the USB ports are disabled and/or power down. Initially I thought that is due to freeze of the OS. But I was able to connect non USB mouse which was working fine. Only the USB mouse and keyboard were without power. Changing the USB port didn't help.

In short:

If you have this problem use Eject instead of Safely Remove Drive

I've check the Linux Mint log manager without finding anything which could be the cause of the problem.

How to see logs in Cinnamon

  • Menu
  • Administration
  • System Log Viewer

I have another machine which is working with Linux Mint 17.3 - laptop - which works fine with Safely Remove Drive

I did several test and it seems that using eject is not causing this error.

I've red that Eject and Safely remove Drive - are almost identical. The slight difference would be:

  • Safely remove is for USB, external hard disk
  • Eject - is more associated with CD/DVD

Both are supposed to synchronize data and unmount the external drive from the OS.

But from my experience:

Safely Remove Drive

  1. sync data
  2. unmount
  3. physically removes the drive
  4. all the USB ports are stopped

Which is not the case for Eject

I'm testing commands udisks and eject which is installed by default on Linux Mint 17 and higher. The commands for removing USB are:

So far I both seems to work fine with removing USB

sudo udisks --unmount /dev/sdb1
sudo udisks --detach /dev/sdb

eject

After further investigation I found that:

  • Safely remove Drive - OS fully disable the USB drive while Eject syncing data of the device and unmount the USB drive