[arch-general] USB Buffering Issue

Hello all, I've been having some trouble with USB drives in the last few months. When copying files onto a device, the copy appears to be instantaneous, but is clearly buffered by the kernel. If I unmount the drive, all appears well, but then removing the device results in corruption. In order to work around this, I have to run "sync" before unmounting the device. Any ideas what might be causing this, or how to fix it? It would be nice to get a *real* progress bar when copying large files, instead of a quick flash followed by a boring minute or more of staring at "sync". Paul