Windows 7: How to turn off external hard disk

Hi,

I´ve just installed Windows 7 on my laptop, before of it I had XP. In XP when I saffetly remove my hard disks after a while (5 seconds aprox) it turned off, i.e. it just didn´t vibrate more and as I think it means that it stoped to take energy from the laptop. My external HD use just one usb for data and energy. I post this thread because when I saffetly remove the same external HD in Windows 7, after it says that it is possible to disconnect it the HD remains vibrating, i.e. taking energy from the laptop issue that worry me because I feel that if I disconnect it in this way I will damage it.

Please tell me what could I do to fix it.

Excuses for my english hope you could help me.

Thanks for your attention,



M

Does it have an external power supply as well? If it does it should have a switch to power it down. How are you telling it to shut down?

You can also safely eject the drive first: here , then power-off or unplug the usb cable...:

Hi, Thanks for the interest.

My external HD does not have somethind like a switch to turn it off. it just have an USB cable.

The problem is that after I safetly remove it from the system, it remains taking energy from the laptop and to unplug it in this way is, as I could think, a kind of dangerous action for the external HD.

In winXP it works really fine, but I don´t know why it doesn´t work in the same way for Windows 7.

Thanks again,

M

Are you positive the drive enclosure doesn't have a cooling fan built it which may continue to run even after the drive is safely removed by the hardware removal wizard?

I've noticed the same behavior with flash drives that have LED lights on them, the LED remains on when 'ejected' from a Win 7 machine where it would have turned off on a Win XP machine. Not sure that there is a solution.

I do not think it is a big matter after you have "safely remove" the hard drive, to unplug the drive from the USB port, even if the light is still on.
That's the Way Windows7 handle the external drive. I've not encounter any issue of data loss after doing that way.