Re: [Hampshire] powering off USB external HDDs

Edward Beckmann wrote:
> Hi
>
> Probably a doh! question but here goes.
>
> If I use one of the USB-powered external HDDs now quite common, can I
> power them down without unplugging them? I want to use one for
> short-term backups / rarely used data. Yes, I will also plan the
> off-site stuff as well.

Someone will correct me if I am wrong but here goes.

I use two external drives on a very old box and hald picks up the drives
and creates the fstab entry. I then manually mount the drives and when I
want to disconnect them have to umount then turn off the drive.

Of course this is a server system, desktop systems will likely mount the
drive and simply turning it off should unmount it.

Personally I prefer to unmount or 'eject' the drive before turning it
off as my server systems are configured to cache data in memory and
turning off the (ext2/3) external drive has resulted in disk recovery
and lost files.

Hope this helps,
Jacqui