Power down hard drive?

[FP]

I recently purchased a SATA/PATA->USB adapter to make imaging hard drives easier.

The device works great except I can't figure out how to get the hard drive to spin down before turning off the power. If I shut down my computer the externally connected hard drive (powered through the adapter) is still spinning. If I unplug the drive from the adapter (basically remove power) I can hear the drive spin down. Is this safe?

"Ejecting" the drive from Windows doesn't spin it down either fwiw.

 

[ViRGE]

Yes that's perfectly safe. Once the drive is safely unmounted from the operating system via ejecting it, you can cut the power.