Hi. I've got an external USB drive (actually, a regular hard drive I stuck in one of those cases that turns it into a USB drive). When I unmount the thing from Linux, it's still powered on and spinning. Is there a more graceful way to power it off from Linux instead of just hit the power switch after it's unmounted? Furthermore, is killing it like that while it's spinning bad for the drive?

I doubt if powering down is needed. As long as you unmount it then just unplugging it should will be safe. I assume if not connected to a computer an the power supply is connected to it and turned on then the drive will start spinning? This is normal for standard IDE drives unless modified not to start spinning at power on. Scsi drives have better control over this.

Many IDE drives have a spin down timer built in. It is possible to spin it down after unmounting and before unplugging. Check out this site for help. Specific to USB drives. http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FAQ/...wnUSBHarddisks

Hope this helps.
Brian1

Well, ok, glad to hear it's not hurting the drive.

The instructions you link to seem to involve sticking the drive in a machine to configure it. I've only got a laptop right now, so that's not really an option for me, but it sounds like it's not necessary anyway.

Thanks!