to remove a pen drive have to use "safely remove drive " twice

if you execute udisks --unmount device? it works fine?

udisks --unmount device works fine.only right click menu gives that trouble.

There is an important distinction that needs to be raised here:

When you just unmount the drive, the light on the drive stays on, indicating that it might still be connected.

When you "Safely Unmount Drive," the light goes out, clearly indicating that it is no longer at risk for removal.

In testing this for comparison purposes, I have found an indication of what may be behind this problem:

On nvidia chipsets, this problem occurs. (In my case, nvidia's MCP61 chipset with the ohci_hcd and ehci_hcd drivers)

On Intel chipsets, this problem does not occur. (Test case is Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) controllers with the ehci_hcd an duhci_hcd drivers)

On the Ubuntu-users discussion list, this has now been confirmed by another user.

Yes, I tested it this morning and added my comment to the discussion list.

I have two machines available to me here, one about three years old with an Asus motherboard and nvidia USB chips, the other about six years old with an Intel motherboard and Intel USB chips.

Taking the same DaneElec branded flash drive, on the machine with the Intel board it correctly safely removes with one attempt, on the other machine with the Asus motherboard and nvidia chips, it takes two attempts.

lspci on the Asus board says:-
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3)

I also get this in Maverick on a machine with a nvidia chipset, but not on two others with an Intel and an AMD/ATI chipset. The affected machine's lspci includes:

00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a1)

The unaffected machines have Intel 82801I (ICH9 Family) and ATI SB700/SB800 respectively.

On the affected nvidia-chipset machine I also see this behaviour with external hard drives, not just flash drives.

i can confirm Richard E's case. the problem affects both external hard disks and flash drives.

00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)

this does not happen in machines with other chipsets.

I have nvidia-ion-based box and I have this bug in Maverick.
lspci|grep USB
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)
00:06.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
00:06.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)
I did not have this bug in Karmic and Lucid.

I have this problem with Intel USB controller, on a fresh installation of maverick x86_64.
I tried with a Hitachi 1TB, and a Toshiba 2TB, both formatted NTFS, same problem.

The affected machine is a laptop Acer Extensa 5630G. The lspci output is below:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3650
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV635 Audio device [Radeon HD 3600 Series]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation WiFi Link 5100
0d:06.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. Cardbus bridge (rev 01)
0d:06.2 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MMC/SD Controller (rev 02)
0d:06.3 Mass storage controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MS/xD Controller (rev 03)

I don't remember having this bug in 10.04.

I have the same problem with Acer Aspire R3610 - Ubuntu 10.10 - x86_64.

~/bin$ lspci|grep USB
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)

All USB disk need to be unmout/remouved twice in nautilus.

Same problem here, after upgrade from Lucid to Maverick. Thumb drives and USB external DVD drive remount automatically when I right-click and 'Safely Remove Drive'. Works on second attempt and works first time when unmounted from the command-line.

$ lspci | grep USB
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3)

Same problem here, under Maverick. I always need to 'Safely Remove Drive' twice.

lspci|grep USB

00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)

Same problem, Maverik.

lspci|grep USB
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a1)
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a1)

This is a really bad bug and has already cost me data-loss on an external NTFS-drive. What needs to be done to fix this? Is this a Ubuntu-only bug or should it be reported upstream?

I have filed this as a bug in the Gnome bugzilla as major (causes data loss) at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=641873.

I get this behavior consistently also with Kingston USB drives. However, one wrinkle not reported above is that the USB drive is initially mounted at USB 2.0 speed as expected, but after the first "Safely Remove Drive" it is always remounted at USB 1.1 speed only. My Kingston drive uses different colored LEDs to report the different connection speeds (red for USB 1.1, blue for USB 2.0).

The GNOME people don't seem to care. What can be done about this but. What needs to be done to investigate further? I know lots of people for whom this bug caused data loss and it still happens in natty. In fact, pretty much every Ubuntu user I know suffers from this bug. The only workaround I know is unmounting from the command line.

Isn't data loss a reason to mark this critical?

Don't know if this adds any further value to the discussion, but here's my system stats:

Ubuntu 11.04
Kernel 2.6.38-8-generic
i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

~$ lspci | grep USB
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)

I can confirm Edmund Crouchs comment on the USB2.0/1.1 issue: Ubuntu's palimpsest tells me my disk is connected with 480 MB/s initially, and with only 12 MB/s after the first safe removal.

I have not yet suffered from data loss (my external hard drive holds two ext4 partitions). How could data loss happen anyway, since the write-buffers are flushed on save removal (Am I messing up facts)?

The bug exists in Natty too? I think I will skip this release too and stick to lucid. :(

Same behaviour (on natty 11.04) for me on my ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard.

Using safe remove remounts the usb key a few seconds after the action.

I think that there is a little problem with Nvidia's USB chipsets.

I always have this message on my dmesg:

[10420.100709] WARNING! power/level is deprecated; use power/control instead

Does anybody knows how to switch on power/control instead of power/level (to see if the problem persists) ?

the problem is not with nautilus. it is probably the nvidia usb controller driver in maverick and natty which is screwed. does anyone know a way to unload the driver from the kernel and load the driver from lucid?

same problem, ubuntu 11.10