Dear David! First of all I would like to thank you for answer and recommendation!
I tested my USB-harddrives with sg_start utility. Thank you for hint, I did not know about SCSI utilities before. I made such tests under Ubuntu 12.04.4, Fedora 20 and OpenSuSe 13.1 with all installed updates. * Ubuntu 12.04.4 does not have udisks2, it has udisks 1.0.4-5ubuntu2.1, sg3-utils 1.33-1. * Fedora 20 has udisks-1.0.4-12.fc20.i686, udisks2-2.1.2-1.fc20.i686, sg3_utils-1.37-2.fc20.i686. * OpenSuSe 13.1 has udisks-1.0.4-13.1.3.i586, udisks2-2.1.1-2.1.3.i586, sg3_utils-1.36-3.1.2.i586. For more adequate results I disabled auto-mount feature in GNOME with dconf-editor (as recommended here - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB#Configuring_Automounting). My test results are the following: 1. For my USB-HDD (Seagate ST9750420A in USB 2.0 Tsunami e-data 2500 enclosure, lsusb - 04fc:0c25 Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd SATALink SPIF225A) 1.1. command “sg_start --stop /dev/sdX” really spin-downs my drive (sometimes on 2nd or 3rd attempt - I don’t know why), device remains in system and spin-up again only on my demand. 1.2. command “udisks --detach /dev/sdX” spin-downs my drive (always on 1st attempt), device is completely removed from system after detach. 2. For my USB 3.0 WD My Passport Ultra (WD WD20NMVW, lsusb - 1058:0743 Western Digital Technologies, Inc.) 2.1. command “sg_start --stop /dev/sdX” is ignored by this HDD (it make one click, but does not spin-down). Maybe it is because of proprietary/non-fully-compliant ATA-command set in WD’s controller. 2.2. command “udisks --detach /dev/sdX” spin-downs my drive (on 1st attempt always), device is completely removed from system after detach. So the results are identical for all three distros. For me it seems, that “udisks --detach” works better and in 100% (on all distros and with proprietary WD HDD-controller). So if you have time, please, do deeper comparison between udisks v.1, udisks v.2 and sg_start. I'm ready to do more testing if you send me concrete instruction, but I am not expert and I do not know how to debug/trace/log ATA and udisks. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to gnome-disk-utility in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1239087 Title: Safely remove is not working (or broken) in Gnome Disks To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-disk-utility/+bug/1239087/+subscriptions -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs