See also:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=670452
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619665
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=819492

In GNOME 3.0 and 3.2, there was some ugly code to pop up a notification window when a storage device was being unmounted but it wasn't complete yet, data was still being written. The notification window went away when the data had all been synced.

In 3.4, this notification window is gone - see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=670452 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=819492 . So now, when you click to 'eject' a drive from Shell and data still needs to be synced to the drive, you have absolutely no indication the unmount is still in progress and it's not safe to disconnect the drive yet. You either have to know to watch the lights on the device (if it has any), know to open a console and run 'sync' and not unplug the device until it returns, or just guess.

Shell should notify the user in some way when unmount is still in progress and it's not safe to disconnect the storage device. Either with a spinner somewhere, or with an actual notification, or with something else - ask the design team. I'm not fussy. It just needs to communicate somehow 'hold up, skippy, we're still writing data, don't unplug anything yet' and then 'okay, we're done writing, unplug away'. This is critical because it can result in data corruption (or at least incomplete transfer).