up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

When I attach a USB cable from my PC to my Aria, I'm asked on the Aria screen whether I want to mount the drive. I answer yes.

My question: how do I unmount from the Aria before pulling the cable? Is there any danger from pulling the cable for the drive is unmounted? Is unmounting from the drive on the Aria screen the same as unmounting from the SD card.

Thank you for any help that you can provide.

link|improve this question
80% accept rate
1  
Which Operating System are you using? – Randolf Richardson Apr 19 '11 at 20:03
Thanks for the answers. So I've pulled a few pen drives out of my Windows 7 machines in the past without unmounting from them when Windows doesn't release it even when I shut everything down, and no damage was done to the drives. I hope the SD card is the same way. Thank you all for clearing up the question I had about from which end unmounting referred to (the Windows side). – user33666 Apr 19 '11 at 20:42
feedback

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

When you mount an Android device it converts it into a USB Mass Storage device. This behaves exactly the same as, for example, a USB pen drive. When you want to disconnect it you should treat it exactly as one of these normal USB devices.

Your operating system will have an option to safely remove the device -- in MS-Windows there should be an icon in the System Tray that allows you to do this. In Linux you can either right-click on the icon on the desktop and select Safely Remove Device or unmount it manually from the terminal.

In MacOS X I believe you can right-click on the drive on the desktop and select "Eject" or something similar.

link|improve this answer
Please see my response above. Thanks. – user33666 Apr 19 '11 at 20:44
feedback
up vote 2 down vote

You can just do it with the phone. Drag the notification bar down and tap the "usb connected" notification then tap "turn off usb storage". It is best practice to do this because if you are writing data to the phone and disconnected you could lose your data. That said, I unplugg it without unmounting all day long, pretty much nonstop, since I use the 32 gig card in my phone to store my music when I get up I just make sure the music is not playing on my computer then unplug it. So the risk is there... but if your careful it's basically non existent. I know others will disagree with me but keep in mind your just mounting the SD card for storage (alot of times people have absolutely nothing on it) all the essential data for you phone is in the on board flash and you need the android SDK to mount that.

link|improve this answer
Thanks. This was very helpful. – user33666 Apr 19 '11 at 22:56
feedback
up vote 1 down vote

You should use your Operating System's (Windows, Linux, MacOS) option to safely remove the drive. Then android will detect this and remount your sdcard to the phone.

link|improve this answer
Please see my response above. Thanks. – user33666 Apr 19 '11 at 20:43
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.