removing external usb hdd without unmounting causes reboot?

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 05:03:03PM +0200, Momchil Ivanov wrote:
> "Windows" doesn`t reboot if you unplug the usb or network cable, which I think 
> is the right way of handling these kind of situations.

Windows also (as of XP; I don't think it was this way in 2000) by
default disables read/write caching on all USB-plugged storage devices.

This was done because people were unplugging USB storage devices without
"shutting them down" (going to the systray and selecting the device then
choosing "Stop" to ensure all caches were flushed and data on the device
had been written).  The performance hit is pretty major, but the
attitude is "safety first".

You can, of course, toggle the caching feature per device/drive, but
you'll need to Stop the device before removing it from the USB bus.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |