On 5/25/07, Scott Silva ssilva@sgvwater.com wrote:
Because in linux, everything mounts under one directory tree. So to mount something in that tree, the "directory" needs to exist first. If that drive isn't mounted, the mountpoint will still exist, and can hold data by itself. Unless you set up something like automount that would create the mountpoint, and mount the drive, and after you disconnect, would remove the mountpoint. It would have to check if the drive was there before it created the mountpoint, and stop if it wasn't. Linux has unix roots, and it pre-dates things like removable drives. It comes from a time when drives were large and expensive, and stayed in place once attached.
As far as I can tell, all USB drives are handled by automount. My /media is empty unless there is something attached to the machine that "should" live there, like a USB drive or a DVD/CD in one of my DVD drives.