While safely removing an external hard drive (or USB stick), Files does issue notifications as stated in the link below (“Writing data to … Device should not be unplugged…”). Once the data transfer is complete, the message for safely removing the device also appears normally.
But these notifications are so tiny and silent that it is easy to not notice them. The risk of not noticing them and removing the drive prematurely by mistake is obviously high.
Is there any way to customize these notifications to make them appear more boldly, and with a audible tone?
At least, here is an article how to adjust the volume of the notifications in Ubuntu.
Don’t know, how (or if) it’s possible, to get a grip on the size of the notification(s) though.
Well, that shouldn’t ever happen, because nobody should remove the drive before double checking that the transfer actually finished. If the files are explicitly crucial, I run a checksum test over the source and destination files, just to be sure, they are transferred correctly, even if no errors appeared during or after the copy operation.
In GNOME, the symbol for file transfer is a circle that starts filling with color as soon as you start transferring file. But this is so easy to miss out specially when the transfer stuck (sometimes) near completion.
I don’t trust GUIs, period… if it’s a “critical” thing - I’ll fire up a terminal and “sudo sync” (and maybe a couple of times, to be sure, to be sure)…
Great article.
Though, I actually really like Pascal’s Syntax and I hate (or more like: I find them useless in a world with Rust and little need for ultra performance programming) languages like FORTRAN or C. (FORTRAN being basically its predecessor.) But that is mainly related to my age. Maybe if I were older I would say the same stuff.
Pascal was the main language I studied doing comp sci at uni (few years later they replaced it with ADA!)… I did reasonably well at it… Failed C (the unit was a combination of C and C++)… also did 8086 assembly (and passed)… also learned Lotus 123’s macro language (at Uni and at work)… learned a tiny bit of JCL (and JES/2) at work as well, when I was a mainframe operator, but mostly just editing existing JCL…
Never finished that comp sci degree however… Never since used any 3 or 4 GL in my work other than UNIX/Linux shell scripts (korn and bash mostly)… can kinda read/follow PERL, and ruby syntax makes some sense (thanks to using Puppet)… and also YAML…
NEVER done anything in Fortran, ever… never even seen it… Also - did learn a bit of BASIC (Microsoft Basic on Tandy TRS80 / Trash80)…
Here is an update - I installed GNOME Shell extension “Notifications Alert by hackedbellini”.
It makes the alert blink a specified number of times in a color of your choice.
Have tried a few times while mounting and ejecting external USB drive.
Seems effective in catching attention - especially when ejecting.
Not an ideal solution of course, but looks like a definite improvement.
You can specify apps for which this should activate. “Disks” seemed to work for me selectively.
Just for information…
This is a great site for general Linux users… Quite practical and useful tips… Thanks so much.
I sometimes get that message here in Peppermint after ejecting a external drive and had not even transferred any files from or over to said device. Usually if you close down the file manager you’re using, then pull out the device, it does nothing. A lot of the time these external USB drives have been tested to vigorous degrees of use. It’s a Windows thing to be overly cautious to my mind, especially if you’re like me and have lost the function of the external device, altogether after pulling it out, without ejecting it first? I always eject it by left clicking the eject icon or unmount icon next to said device in the window manager.
