Previous versions of Ubuntu had nice looking application called Ejecter:
Description: application to unmount easily and safely external devices
Ejecter is a simple menu that sits in the system notification area, providing
you a quick way to unmount an external peripheral such as USB pendrive,
CD/DVD disk, external hard disk and so.
.
Ejecter will sleep behind the scenes and show an icon in the system tray when
one or more devices are connected to your computer.
It places its icon in notification area and allow to detach USB-device as in MS Windows. See screenshots (from here):
But is was removed from repositories since 14.04 LTS.
Is it possible to make Ejecter working on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS or 18.04 LTS?
Preferable I need solution for MATE DE.
Best Answer
Other methods (but out-the-box)
Disk Mounter applet
As @DKBose has noted, on Ubuntu MATE you can use other method.
All current versions have Disk Mounter applet (from
mate-applets
package):it is very compact on the MATE Panel and
allows to mount, unmount and eject media:
Note: Disk Mounter applet does not spin-off (spin-down) USB HDDs.
Caja
Standard MATE file-manager (Caja) allows to Eject, Unmount, and (for some devices) to Safely Remove Drive from Devices section
and from drop-down menu:
and from desktop:
Here Safely Remove Drive removes power from USB-flash (switches LED off) and spin-downs USB-HDD.
GNOME Disks
If other methods fail, then you can install
gnome-disk-utility
package and use GNOME Disks (gnome-disks
executable) application to mount, unmount and power off the drive:Ejecter (original problem)
Yes, it is possible. But we need to get some packages from 12.04 LTS repositories manually:
then for 14.04 LTS use
or for 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS
Then log-out and log-in again.
Connect USB-flash or HDD and you will get Ejecter icon in the notification area.
To eject the device click on the Ejecter icon, then on appropriate device name and it will be safely removed from the system.
Notes:
1. Ejecter does not spin-down external USB hard disks. Use GNOME Disks (
gnome-disks
or from Applications→Accessories→Disks) for this purpose.2. This solution was tested on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (MATE, Unity and GNOME FlashBack) Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (MATE, Unity and GNOME FlashBack), Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (MATE, Unity, GNOME FlashBack, GNOME sHell).