external usb hard disk

[mdbusa]

just bought an external usb harddisk. It has this annoying blue power on/off led. I want to turn the power off cause i wuse this as abackup device etc..

My question-should i go through the hated "safely remove hardware" routine or can I just turn the damn thing off by the power switch. anf turn it back on when i need it.

thanks

 

[Zepper]

As long as you have "delayed write" disabled (should be set that way for any external drive anyway) for that drive and you allow sufficient time for the drive's internal buffer to dump to the disk, then you should be safe using the power switch. Using the USB disconnect sofware feature should assure that both caches are dumped immediately to disk for a bit more safety.

.bh.