Page 1 of external hard drive Help Please

Just brought a 250 gig external hard drive for £47 ebuyer but instructions are mimial, so advice would be appreciated.

The hard drive doesn`t have an off switch, so when I turn the computer off does that mean I can cut the power to the hard drive from the plug socket or do I have to do something else. Can I leave it plugged into the usb (which is at the back of computer on mine) all the time even if hard drive power off and computer is on?

When I try to release the drive when computer is on, just keeps coming up saying drive in use cannot disconnect try later, hence turning computer off.

Don`t want wreck the drive, so how do people of the forum turn thier external hard drives off.

Many thanks

I had this problem with my old external drive - i must have unplugged it when it was doing something in the end it corrupted a couple of files and killed the hard drive.

Now got a seagate one - again with no bloody switch on it :/ Only use it for itunes - so I wait for a few secs after closing itunes and when light stops flickering and drive stops buzzing then switch it off.

Don`t like the idea of leaving it on 24/7

my maxtor has dies on me which is great, as I plugged it in to doa full backup as I`m about to ake my PC apart to fiddle with it, and tought I`d do a quick and easy backup to usb :(

anyway. To unplug while in windows right click on the little usb icon in task tray bottom right hand corner. If it won`t let you unplug that device, make sure windows explorer is shut if looking at a file/directory on the usb device, and all programs that could be using it are shut.

when it says safely remove, you can safely remove