FYI, when you unbind the scsi disk driver by writing the 1 to the delete knob in sysfs, it takes care of issuing the synchronize cache and start/stop unit commands. You can see this in dmesg. You mentioned the usb mass storage driver, which I would not have thought of. I'd bet that is the issue. My guess is that most drives appear to work because they shut off their LED when given the STOP UNIT command when the scsi disk driver unbinds, but if the usb mass storage driver is still bound, some drives decide to keep the LED on.
-- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, 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 Status in GNOME Disks: Fix Released Status in abstraction for enumerating and managing block devices: Confirmed Status in “gnome-disk-utility” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in “gnome-disk-utility” package in Fedora: Unknown Status in “gnome-disk-utility” package in openSUSE: Confirmed Bug description: In 12.04 I was able to safely remove USB-stick (make its LED off) and USB-HDD (do a spin down). In 13.04 this option is missed. In 13.10 it is appeared again, but not working as expected: + Gnome Disks normally powers off the USB flash (tested on 4 different flashes and 2 USB cardreaders). - Gnome Disks does not spin down USB HDD (but udisks --detach does) ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10 Package: gnome-disk-utility 3.8.2-1ubuntu2 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.10.0-1.8-generic 3.10.0-rc7 Uname: Linux 3.10.0-1-generic i686 NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2 Architecture: i386 Date: Sat Oct 12 13:39:21 2013 InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-03-06 (219 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Alpha i386 (20130306) MarkForUpload: True SourcePackage: gnome-disk-utility UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-06-23 (110 days ago) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-disk-utility/+bug/1239087/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
