'Safely remove' unmounts the device, so the light on the usb-storage device means nothing. Umount syncs all cached data to the device, so it can be removed any time, after umount has finished.
I have never had an issue with data loss after umounting a device (while I had a problem once, when I forgot to umount it;) -- USB memory stick light stays on after "safely remove" (KDE) https://launchpad.net/bugs/90097 -- kubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-bugs
