Hi, I posted on this a while ago, and it seemed to spark some serious unix fighting talk: A: you should sync 3 times B: no you shouldn't. Linux only does it once A: okay how about sync'ing 2 times? B: if you read subsection 8(i) of part 4b of the man page it clearly states.... and so on..... All of which doesn't help me one little bit. The USB harddisk is mouted automatically by HAL. This bypasses /etc/fstab, and thus (from a non-root user's perspective) is not actually mounted. When they issue a umount command, they get the error message "/media/foo is not listed in the mnttab, and anyway you're not root, so piss off" So what is the solution? Sync then unplug the disk? Come on, I'm sure loads of people must use these disks - what's the recommended way to disconnect them?????? Cheers, Jon.