Wait, is this the fix to that annoying thing when you copy a large file to a slow USB/SDCard and the OS instantly reports the copy as being complete, but actually it's just been written to RAM and is slowly being written to the actual media in the background, and if you "safely remove" the device you just have a broken incomplete file? Is this the fix for that, finally!?

Edit: YES, YES IT IS! HOLY SHIT, AMAZING!

[–] Hiro8811@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The safely remove actually forces the data to be written on the disk.

[–] Shayeta@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Hmm, that might mean I have another issue as well. Since safely remove would just remove the device instantly without waiting...

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

For me, sometimes with huge files even if the copy process ended, and I do a "safely remove", sometimes I still have to wait a big chunk of time. Safely remove is actually safe, nothing should be left. I also thought this was a feature of the filesystem, where it caches and optimizes the actions before doing it under the hood.

With something like System Monitor you should be able to see if anything is writing or reading on the filesystem constantly, before you do a disk remove.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 5 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I have hated "Safely Remove" from back when I was on Windows.
Always did weird GUI stuff and does on this too.

So I just use syncand when it properly finishes, I do safely remove.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I always assumed "safely remove" is just a umount which in turn does the sync before returning.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 1 points 2 hours ago

Yes. I do too.
But historically, the way it has indicated "working" in cases it takes more than a second, has been not very reliable.
Specially on Ubuntu + GNOME back when I had to use it in the office.

[–] flameleaf@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I type sync, then unmount/eject, then safely remove

Can't be too careful

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 0 points 2 hours ago

unmount/eject, then safely remove

If you still have the safely remove option after running "unmount/eject", I need to know what device you used.

[–] Shayeta@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Same, waiting for sync -f to finish would help most of the time.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

TIL, dd has the option conv=fsync that makes it wait until all writing is finished, before exiting.

So you can just touch /path/to/new/filename and then dd ... of=/path/to/new/filename conv=fsync

Of course, you would have to do this for each file, in case it is multiple

[–] exdor@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago

I had the same with exFAT I think, maybe that is fixed too lets hope