maybe look into udiskie for automounting/unmounting your external drives. It notifies, ejects and powers them off nicely with a terminal command you could alias, script or keybind to something real simple. Then in ranger I have ‘gm’ set as shortcut to go to media. I don’t need the GUI file manager that often anymore.
Sometimes a dream takes a dark turn and that’s usually when I realise that it is in fact a dream. I start to look for an exit and awareness shifts to my physical body eyelids opening as the way out.