I have a Maxtor external that is smart (spins down and sleeps on it's
own). access is slowed down by this fact. Try in a terminal running the
command "mount". As for your other USB devices it is a matter of the OS
seeing them. Right mouse click over them and click safely remove or
unmount. The OS seems to not have a flag that tells it that it has been
connected to a program. If any question it assumes there may be
information not yet written to the device so wants you to unmount it.

That is the problem. If I do as you suggest, up comes a Dialog Box
telling me that I can not 'safely remove because there some files open'.
But I have definitely not opened any.

If you have a window open showing the drive contents that can be
enough to prevent un-mounting - seen that one before :-)

You have a program accessing the device. Close all open windows one at a
time and see what program is holding up the process.

If you left open a window, so it opens when you start the OS, you may
have forgotten that a file keeps the USB device open.

In my own experience when I have something open, for example, in open office, then open an open-office document from my usb card, even after I close that document from the USB card, I cannot eject the device until open
office is closed entirely. This has only happened a few time for me
in linux, but happens all the time in MS-office in Windows. There,
even after closing every office instance, I sometimes have to go into
the taks manager and manually kill the office process...

I have not opened anything. Sequence goes like
this.
1. Close all Windows leaving the Kubuntu desktop on view.
2. Plug in a USB device, after a few seconds a Dialog Box appears
telling me that the device has been recognised and giving me
options of what to do next.
3. On the right hand side of the Box is an arrow symbol which
may be clicked to disconnect the USB device and allow safe
removal.
4. Such a click brings up another couple if lines of dialog saying
the device can be moved as one or more files are being used
by an application.

This has only appeared (I think) since I upgraded to 10.10.

Try closing the dialogue box instead and you should find an icon on
the desktop for the USB drive. Right click on that and select 'Safely
Remove' and see what happens.

The Box just
re-appears with advice that the USB stick can not be removed
because one or more files are open.

I then opened a couple of the files and closed them. When I right
clicked and tried the 'Safely Remove' step again, this message appeared
in the bottom of screen panel;

'org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.NotMountedbyHal; Device to
unmount is not in/media/.hal-mtab so it is not mounted by HAL'

Taking this a step further, this machine does not even recognise
the plug-in of an Adata external drive.

Found this thread which might be the cause of failure to unmount at
least - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=393002 - apparently a
hidden trash file is the culprit.

As for the Adata drive that won't mount - does it mount on other
systems and also does it have an external power source ? I not, i.e.
it's a 2.5" laptop drive, then sometimes the USB port cannot supply
enough power to spin the drive and there is usually a second USB plug
that needs to be plugged into another USB port to provide the extra
power.

Yes it mounted on my laptop, but has no external power so I
dug out an old powered USB Hub and now the Adata mounts
perfectly through it..

No progress on the unmounting of all USB devices as yet.

If I stick a memory pen in it shows on the desktop but it will not
reject or unmount.

I've had variable success with USB on my 10.04 box. Sometimes
a USB stick is recognized, sometimes not, even the same stick.

What I find very consistent though is the Disk Utility

System --> Administration --> Disk Utility

I find it always works for detecting, mounting and unmounting, safely
ejecting and even partitioning and formatting.

Maybe give that a try and see if you have better luck with your USB
drives. It works for me.

Canonical has constantly been playing with the notifications. Each
version is slightly improved. It makes it hard to give advice to
someone using a different version because the changes are often
subtle. Sometimes it has been a vertical drop down and sometimes
horizontal. Sometimes the names are slightly changed or features added
or removed. I like what they have now, but I am using KDE 4.6, and
10.10 has just 4.5. For those of us who change frequently it is often
hard to remember what it looked like before.

Of course, Ubuntu users are in for a big change if they upgrade in the
spring. Unity or GNOME Shell will be very different from GNOME 2.x
which they have now. Kubuntu users can look forward to KDE 4.6 and it
is just a bit different and nicer than 4.5. The big difference is that
Kubuntu has been through the change a couple of years ago that Ubuntu
users are going to go through. We can be sympathetic because we know
what radical change is like and how it can affect the user. Two years
from now we will all wonder what the fuss was about.

On the notifications issue that you raise, Fedora and openSuSE are
looking at Ubuntu/ Kubuntu's notifications for use on their desktops,
so they must be good.

Could you see if you have an autorun file on you USB. Autorun.inf, autorun, or
autorun.sh. I am thinking that maybe something is getting launched that you are
not aware of.

Plain old memory pen with no auto run or protection but you still cannot
use the reject or unmount on my 10.04. just have to c;lose down to
remove. Tried command line removal as well, always say it cannot be
removed because something is open on it.

has the pen been formatted in ubuntu or windows

Have you tried "umount" (not unmount) from the command line? The
syntax is umount /dev/sdb - of course you have to find out what your
system is calling the removable flash drive, it could be quite
different.

Yes thanks I did use umount but it did not work. I will format
and see if it works.