On Jul 24, 2013 4:13 PM, "Bill Davidsen" <davidsen@tmr.com> wrote:
>
> Joe Zeff wrote:
>>
>> On 07/24/2013 11:57 AM, Andre Robatino wrote:
>>>
>>> I saw this once, with a portable hard drive. It happened when I had the
>>> drive plugged in while booting, and unplugged it later. It didn't realize
>>> that it was okay for the drive to be unplugged afterwards. I didn't check if
>>> there is an existing bug report.
>>
>>
>> Did you always unmount the drive before unplugging it?  If not, that might
>> explain the warnings.
>
>
> Depending on the filesystem type, NOT unmounting it might leave it in some dirty state which could be anything from annoying but trivial to actual data loss. I unmount mine as well, but not using GNOME I can't say what "eject" does, I thought that was for media like CD.
>
> --
> Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
>   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
> the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot
>
> --

The issue has happened to me on many occasions early on in my Linux endeavour. I'm sure you can find it again through the settings in X today, if we've added that, but it is pretty-much vital practice to unmount the device before unplugging; however, on my machine today I hear a double-click when the USB disconnects, and a different tone double-click when it connects /re-connects. Given this I still make a practice of unmounting before disconnecting it.