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I've got serious problem with this stupid file manager. When copying files from internal HDD to removable drives on USB 2.0 ports, the speed skyrockets to 70MiB/s, while the theoretical speed of an USB 2.0 port is only 32MiB/s.

After the files "finish" copying, if I leave my portable drive there for a while, it will be okay. But if I unmount the volume immediately and unplug it from the USB port, the files become corrupted.

I wonder if Canonical ever tested such horrible feature before releasing their software to the public? For now, all I want is to disable that caching mechanism. I'm using Nautilus version 1:3.26.4-0ubuntu7.2 on 18.10.

P.S: if anyone is going to say it was because of the drive's internal caching machanism, I can tell you that this bug does not happen on Windows at all. I have to reboot into Windows only to copy big files to the portable HDD.

Livy
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1 Answers1

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What you see in action is the file buffer. First, content is copied to the file buffer. When the buffer is full, copying continues to the file buffer, while on the other end, content is physically being flushed to the disk. Once copying is "finished" for the file manager, the buffer is still being flushed in the background until complete. This is how Linux works, and it will work the same with nautilus Files as with any other file manager on linux.

That you have gotten corrupt files is not the fault of Canonical. It is your fault. To correctly unmount a volume, you need to click the "eject" button in the file manager, or right-click and select "Safely unmount disk". If writing is still ongoing, you will get a notification that you should not yet unplug the drive. Once it is safe to eject the drive, you also will get a notification.

So await the notification before removing the drive. No software or instrumentation ever is 100% foolproof against unproper use.

vanadium
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