Now I don’t know if it’s a Dolphin issue, or if the error could also occur in the terminal.
Let me summarize.
Firstly, I encountered a problem where, when copying data to a USB stick, the files were displayed on the stick and the process was completed, but the files had a size of 0B.
A second attempt resolved this.
Another time I wanted to copy something, and I hadn’t paid much attention to the process. But when the copying was finished and I unplugged and plugged back in the USB drive, nothing was there.
The folders were visible just moments before.
Of course, I unmounted the drive beforehand.
I needed root privileges in the folder to copy.
The worst part, however, is that there was absolutely no warning, no error message, nothing.
ChatGPT was no help either…something about caching and waiting…blah blah…with just a few files, you don’t have to wait 10 seconds after it’s finished.
Since I’ll be sorting and copying photos soon, the question is whether I should use a different file manager, or if the problem is directly related to Linux.
Perhaps someone has some insight.
Sorry this happened. Seems like something worth troubleshooting: Troubleshooting - KDE Community Wiki
In particular, try with other file managers, try using the terminal, try using a different external drive, etc.
Found out what the reason is.
Its a design wise behaviour.
On low speed drives it needs long to write all the copied data to drive and so it
cache it. No filemanager would present a bad “user experience“.
It should be an optional ´sync´ command option after copy to external drives, especially USB stick, sd cards. In my opinion.
As an alternative, i.e. Dolphin should show the “done“ message when its really done!
And not on the half way. For internal drives no problem in most cases, but not for external drives.
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Ah, this is https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281270.
Distros can work around it by forcing that behavior, and there’s also a proposal to build it into Dolphin, too.
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Ah okay.
Reported 2011… never solved.
I use Fedora KDE Plasma, can i do this forcing myself?
Into dolphin its good too.
I think for new user they come from windows….where its easy to deactivate external drive cache (and its the default as far i remember) it could be really bad to loose data.
For me i use a simple rsync terminal command with && sync at the end if needed, but we life in 2026…transfer should be done if its done. No exceptions.
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As a workaround, you could:
-
Do the Copy Operation
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Safely eject the drive instead of pulling it out
The System Tray Icon for Disks and Devices even warns you “Files are still being transferred…”
It would ensure you never have corrupt files / half written data…
I know that, but if you don´t make this and you don´t know anything about this behaviour, you see some empty files and this after the process is done.
For me i delete all the copied files and make the copy process two times and at last i thought it is a dolphin bug.
I tried other filemanagers but i see no option to force syncing, or deactivating drive cache.
For me its okay now, but its not the right way.
It should only show done if its done.
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I definitely agree with that argument 100%