Unmounting portable HDD

[HLA91]

Hi all

I just bought an external 60GB HDD I cant say what brand name as it doesn't have one written on it.
I know there are problems unmounting HDD's and then they do not spin down and I am having the same problem.
It is in /dev/sdc and the ntfs partition is in sdc1
I mount it in /media/portablehdd
I have tried the following script to unmount and spindown the drive and the script runs but the drive remains on with lights and spinning.

#!/bin/sh
pumount /dev/sdc1
#wait for mtab to be updated
sleep 3
#we search an occurency of our harddrive in mtab
UMOUNT=`grep '/dev/sdc1' /etc/mtab | wc -c`
if [ $UMOUNT -eq 0 ]
then
   #we sync the harddrive
   sdparm --command=sync /dev/sdc1
   #we can spindown the hardrive
   sdparm --command=stop /dev/sdc1
   zenity --info --title="Info" --text="You can unplug your Hardrive !"
else
   zenity --error --title="Info" --text="It seems your harddrive isn't unmounted , unmount it then try again"
fi

But the drive still keeps spinning. Can someone please help me as I am getting worried about just pulling the drive out and possibly losing data.

Many thanks

HLA91

[HLA91]

Sorry forgot to mention its Ubuntu 9.04

[sillyboy]

assuming this is desktop edition, there should be an eject icon next to the device in the file explorer (can't remember what it is called). whenever i used my portable hdd with ubuntu 9.04 i used this, and it hasn't lost data.

hope that helps.

[HLA91]

Ok thanks, I was just worried as it wasn't spinning down but I just tried it on Win XP and it still doesn't spin down after 'safely removing' it. It only stops spinning once you unplug it.

Cheers

HLA91