Dolphin in KDE 4.10 and External harddrives

[sdeber]

Guys. Before 4.10, when I use "Safely remove XXX" to remove a partition from an external harddrive, it just umounts the partition so that I can re-mount it again later. But now, it umounts the partition, then remove the usb device from the system (somethings powers off the devices, e.g. usb pen drives). OK, this should be the ideal action for "Safely remove", but it is not very convenient because if I want to remount these partitions, then I have to take out the usb plug, then re-plug it into my computer. Is there any way to bring back the old behavior to Dolphin?

To be more precise, this behavior happens only to certain type of usd hard drives, e.g my Maxtor external harddrive, it does not eject, but with my Freecom usb drive, it ejects the device. Especially, it ejects my usb harddrive dock, this is really bad.

[dmeyer]

Flash drives and external hard drives are treated differently. This is normal on most OS's. You could try Settings > Removable Devices to see if maybe there is something you can do about it but I doubt it.

[sdeber]

Flash drives and external hard drives are treated differently. This is normal on most OS's. You could try Settings > Removable Devices to see if maybe there is something you can do about it but I doubt it.

It ejects flash drives even in the previous versions. This is good. But now it also ejects some types of external harddrive. This is not so good, especially for those external docks for SATA hard drives. I suspect this is something that is distribution specific, or kernel specific.

[dmeyer]

It ejects flash drives even in the previous versions. This is good. But now it also ejects some types of external harddrive. This is not so good, especially for those external docks for SATA hard drives. I suspect this is something that is distribution specific, or kernel specific.

Ok. That's odd. I honestly don't know what is wrong and to be honest I think its one of those crappy little KDE nuances you have to live with.

[oshunluvr]

You should be able to write a udev rule to fix this.

[dmeyer]

You should be able to write a udev rule to fix this.

Not quite. He's trying to use KDE's device manager and it is acting oddly. I have a feeling udev is not going to help here.

[sdeber]

Not quite. He's trying to use KDE's device manager and it is acting oddly. I have a feeling udev is not going to help here.

udev helps here. I created a rule file under /etc/udev/rules.d to solve this problem:

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", \
KERNEL=="sd?*", \
ENV{UDISKS_PRESENTATION_NAME}="$env{ID_VENDOR} (%n}", \
ENV{UDISKS_SYSTEM_INTERNAL}="1"

But this has some side effects. First, usb pendrives will not be detached any more, only unmounted. Second, unmounting may not be the safest way to remove a usb storage device because by unmounting the partition, the kernel will try to commit all changes to the disk, however, if the disk itself has some caching policies that keep the data in the on-device cache, then unmounting may not be as safe as detaching is (provided that detaching is working properly). But as far as I as concerned, this is not a problem for me.

[sdeber]

Update.

The above code works for my usb harddrive dock, but for my Freecom usb drive, it does not work. Here is another rule that works for all my devices:

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", \
KERNEL=="sd?*", \
ENV{ID_DRIVE_DETACHABLE}="0"

[oshunluvr]

I thought you could create a specific udev rule for your devices, but if generic works - great.