I saw this link to Launchpad on Digg and Slashdot today. Evidently its bad to constantly load/unload the drive and Ubuntu does this a huge amount of times per hour (like 180 times instead of around 5). This can lead to nasty wear and tear on the drive and limit its life to only a few months instead of 3-5 years. I've added the updates suggested in the launchpad entry. It seems like this could be nasty, or it could be much adieu about nothing. I'll keep track of this bung though and see what transpires.