Taking this question and it's answer into account What is the difference between "Unmount", "Eject", "Safely Remove Drive" and the eject icon? I ask:
Why do both options appear if they are the same.
Is there some kind of difference in regards to how they unmount the unit (Just in case they changed their functionality in the latest Ubuntu versions) and if they are the same, would it be possible to remove one of them.
umount removes the device from the file system (mount point).
Eject and Safely remove both do basically the same thing on a flash drive.
sync the data , then un-mount (remove the drive from the file system).
In addition, eject would eject the media (think CD/DVD).
It is sort of a bug that both these options show with flash drives.
The expected behavior would be
Safely Remove - USB/Flash drive - sync data && unmount ; user then physically removes the drive
Eject - CDROM/DVD - unmount && eject physical media
Eject unmounts the file system and ejects the CD but in the case of a flask media drive, it is still connected to the system (ie. can still be re-mounted or re-accessed and is still connected to the hub's 5V supply).
Safely Remove unmounts and disconnects the drive from the hub (ie. in enabled hubs it will remove power from the device). In this case, the only way to remount it is to unplug/re-plug the device for the hub to re-enable it.
For removal purposes, Safely Remove is the best option. Eject is useful to unmount the file system so Gparted or another program can access the device directly.
One further nuance for choosing between them:
If you have one of those built-in sets of slots for SD/SDHC/MicroSD cards then using Safely Remove will remove power to the device, rendering it useless until the computer is re-booted.
It is better to use Unmount which will allow the slot to be used again.
