Safely Removing USB Mass Storage Device With Android 4.1

[digiPixel]

How do I safely remove a USB Mass Storage device in Android 4.1 Looked for an Eject/Unmount option in Settings under the Storage category but found nothing. Currently using the Finless 1.5 ROM on the MK802 IIIS.

[bobafetthotmail]

Look in your File Manager app.

[digiPixel]

Look in your File Manager app.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the Explorer app for Unmounting/Ejecting an external storage device.

[Finless]

Every JB rom I have seen to date is missing the ability to unmount USB storage devices. I am not sure why!
It's very annoying.

Bob

[bobafetthotmail]

afaik, the reason why in Windows there is that option is because the system uses write caching when transferring files (on NTFS partitions anyway), so the window saying "file is being transferred" is closed before the device has actually finished writing.

As long as Android does not use write caching (kind of stupid if you have less than 1 GB of actual RAM) there shouldn't be any issue in yanking off usb stuff as long as you are sure that no app is working on it.

I highly doubt a sudden power loss on the memory device does damage it, as for either flash drives and HDDs there is no command to "shut down" their hardware.

[digiPixel]

afaik, the reason why in Windows there is that option is because the system uses write caching when transferring files (on NTFS partitions anyway), so the window saying "file is being transferred" is closed before the device has actually finished writing.

As long as Android does not use write caching (kind of stupid if you have less than 1 GB of actual RAM) there shouldn't be any issue in yanking off usb stuff as long as you are sure that no app is working on it.

I highly doubt a sudden power loss on the memory device does damage it, as for either flash drives and HDDs there is no command to "shut down" their hardware.

What will really result in data loss on the storage device is when an app or some other piece of software is using the device when it is unplugged. That is why the Eject option is available on all of the major desktop OS's (Linux, Windows, Mac OS). To make sure that the device is no longer in use, and if it is display a warning message otherwise display a message saying the device can be safely removed.

Android has similar functionality however it is only tailored to microSD cards. Might be wrong on this one. Have a chance to check it out with a Galaxy Note 10.1 running Android 4.1 (official update).

[EdT]

Today people talk like 1GB of RAM is like nothing, just a couple of years ago 1GB was a lot and still is if you know how to use it !

[bobafetthotmail]

What will really result in data loss on the storage device is when an app or some other piece of software is using the device when it is unplugged. That is why the Eject option is available on all of the major desktop OS's (Linux, Windows, Mac OS). To make sure that the device is no longer in use, and if it is display a warning message otherwise display a message saying the device can be safely removed.

All devices I know have a LED that is activated or flashing or changes colour (anyway makes itself noticed) if the device is writing stuff. And write caching or not, the led never lies as it is controlled by the memory device hardware. And I doubt the "safely remove hardware" is better as it does not tell you what app is using the device.
As long as you disconnect the device when led isn't indicating "writing", no data loss happens.

Today people talk like 1GB of RAM is like nothing, just a couple of years ago 1GB was a lot and still is if you know how to use it !

There is a sweet spot for anything depending on needs. For a phone/tablet 512 mb (actually more like 390 mb as there is some of that locked out for the GPU and other coprocessors) is more than enough. If you want to do games or multitask you need more.
I personally think Android's sweet spot for heavy use is around 2-3 GB, with that you can pre-load more or less everything at boot with still a gig to spare, and that would give the device a lot of responsiveness.
Anyway I was talking of write caching. Devices with 1 GB or less rarely have write caches big enough to matter (otherwise they would impair the system as that is ram eaten up straight to contain the transferred files), so it makes sense to drop the feature entirely.