how do turn off an external hard drive

[Guy Fraser]

On Sat, 2005-24-09 at 17:02 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
> I have an 80 GB IOMEGA USB2 hard drive.
> Mounting it is easy.
> Unmounting seems to work,
> but when I push the power off button,
> the power stays on.
> Just for the hell of it, I tried "ejecting".
> 
> 
> root at 24-117-46-53 media]# df -h IO*
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda1              75G  349M   75G   1% /media/IOMEGA_HDD
> [root at 24-117-46-53 media]# eject -v /media/IOMEGA_HDD
> eject: device name is `/media/IOMEGA_HDD'
> eject: expanded name is `/media/IOMEGA_HDD'
> eject: `/dev/sda1' is mounted at `/media/IOMEGA_HDD'
> eject: unmounting device `/dev/sda1' from `/media/IOMEGA_HDD'
> eject: `/dev/sda1' is a multipartition device
> eject: trying to eject `/dev/sda1' using CD-ROM eject command
> eject: CD-ROM eject command succeeded
> [root at 24-117-46-53 media]#
> 
> There were no CD's to eject and drawers did not open.
> 
> [root at 24-117-46-53 media]# cat /etc/fstab
> # This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
> LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
> LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
> none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
> none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
> LABEL=/home             /home                   ext3    defaults        1 2
> none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
> none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
> LABEL=/usr/local        /usr/local              ext3    defaults        1 2
> /dev/hda5               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
> /dev/hdd                /media/cdrecorder       auto    pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,managed,user 0 0
> /dev/hdc                /media/cdrom            auto    pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,managed,user 0 0
> /dev/fd0                /media/floppy           auto    pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,managed,user 0 0
> /dev/sda1               /media/IOMEGA_HDD       vfat    pamconsole,exec,noauto,iocharset=utf8,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,managed 0 0
> 
> 
> How do I turn the power off?
> Just unplugging would seem a bad idea.

I have a few USB2 and FireWire drives, and after unmounting them 
I just unplug the cable. I use some as data shuttles and don't 
usually power them off when unplugging them from one machine to 
plug into another. In the last two years I have only had one 
weird issue and I just posted it on Friday, but all is well now.
By the way all my enclosures have a toggle switch to shut them 
down.