Unable to Unmount External USB Drive

[MikeH30]

How do I properly unmount a external USB hard drive (Western Digital My Book 300GB)? When I right click on the icon for the external device I choose "unmount". But I get a error "Operation Failed - Cannot figure out where the device is mounted."

My OS is Suse Linux Enterprise Server - SP2.

-Mike

[Cool01]

The only answers I can think of are:

1. Call up a text Shell and try a text umount command. I do not remember the syntax, but you can find it in "man" or "info".

2. Turn off the computer. In my case, it was convenient for me to turn off the computer when I was done, so I never tried to unmount my external HD. So I do not know if it works on mine or not.

[devils casper]

Execute this

su -
fdisk -l
df -h

Post output here.

[MikeH30]

Here is the output. Any help will be apprecitated - thanks!!

linux-0f1s:~ # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 194 1558273+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 195 19452 154689885 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 38913 312568641 83 Linux
linux-0f1s:~ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 148G 115G 34G 78% /
udev 502M 112K 502M 1% /dev
/dev/sdb1 294G 197G 82G 71% /media/disk
linux-0f1s:~ #

[devils casper]

/dev/sdb1 294G 197G 82G 71% /media/disk

Try this

su -
umount /dev/sdb1

[MikeH30]

Thanks devils casper! After running the unmount command that you posted I noticed that the GUI still shows the drive as mounted - when I right click on the icon for the external storage device the option to "unmount" is still visible. Is the device truly unmmounted? It appears that it is not from my output below.

Output from Terminal:
linux-0f1s:~ # umount /dev/sdb1
linux-0f1s:~ # umount /dev/sdb1
umount: /dev/sdb1: not mounted
linux-0f1s:~ #

Next I powered off the external USB device and unlugged it from my server and noticed that there is still a directory in my filesystem called "/media/disk" and is 62GB. I do not want my back up files on my hard disk. They need to be on the USB external hard drive. This has caused me "disk full" errors a couple of times in the past.

What am I doing wrong? I thought all I had to do was plug in the USB hard drive.

How do I prevent the files from my external USB device from being copied to the file system on my hard drive?

-Mike

[devils casper]

Does output of df -h command list /dev/sdb1 partition?

umount /dev/sdb1
df -h

[MikeH30]

Thanks again for replying. Since my last post, I unmounted, powered off, then unplugged the USB cable. I deleted the "disk" directory inside /media/disk. I did not delete /media. Then I re-attached the USB hard drive. Here is the output:


linux-0f1s:~ # umount /dev/sdb1
linux-0f1s:~ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 148G 77G 72G 52% /
udev 502M 112K 502M 1% /dev
linux-0f1s:~ #

I should have ran the "df-h" command before I deleted the "disk" directory inside /media/disk. Does this mean everything is back to normal? What would have caused the USB hard drive to make a copy onto media/disk which resulted in a "error 28" or disk full error?


-Mike

[gogalthorp]

Copying files to the mount location when not mounted might do it.

[MikeH30]

Thank you everyone for your input on this topic!

Copying files to the mount location when not mounted might do it.

That may have been what happened. But I wonder how it became unmounted. I will have to keep an eye on this and will make use of this command more often "dh -h."

-Mike