Arch Linux

colbert

Member

Registered: 2007-12-16

Posts: 809

Hotplugging external eSATA drive

I have an external enclosure with a SATA drive in it and had been using it with a USB connection perfectly fine, but I am trying to make use of the eSATA now. I use a plain fluxbox session with thunar-volman and thunar for file management outside of shell, and when I had the drive plugged in via USB it would show up in the side pane with other drives/devices.

Now, when I have it plugged in via eSATA it does not show up in the side pane, but it does mount when I go to /media/path. So I'm wondering: Because this is not a USB drive now, but rather eSATA, does it require a "clean" unmount (ie., I typically right-clicked the icon in side pane of thunar and hit Unmount before unplugging)?? Or do I just hot-unplug? (is that a term? lol ) I just want to be safe.

If it cannot be shown automatically in the side pane I'm guessing some kind of script I can access with a keyboard shortcut in flux keys would be best bet for quick mount/unmount??

Thanks for any help!

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Hotplugging external eSATA drive

Yes, it must be unmounted before being removed as the operating system may have data to still be written.

vogt

Member

From: Toronto, Canada

Registered: 2006-11-25

Posts: 389

Re: Hotplugging external eSATA drive

Either that, or it should be mounted with the sync option (which slows transfers), or somehow make a sync happen before removing it.

I don't know how hal + volume manager mount settings are, but the udev method here mounts with sync or flush (for fat), so data gets written after only a small delay, making unplugging without unmounting reasonably safe.

EDIT: wiki udev mounting method link: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Udev#Udev_Tricks

Last edited by vogt (2008-08-19 22:04:53)