Yes, it's exactly like pulling and replugging, which was exactly what I needed!

--edit-- is sync even a bash builtin? Looks like it's /bin/sync on my systems. / had been lost (it was on a usb stick on an internal header on an unreliable usb3 card, I later found out.)

--edit 2-- if you meant also echoing s to the sysrq-trigger, it seemed to kill the session