Storage Solutions Safely remove Portable HDD on Windows 7

[spawnfreak]

I've never been able to understand how SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE works in Windows.
For e.g When i plug in my seagate go flex HDD, and to remove it safely, I click SAFELY REMOVE DEVICE and there is a click sound but the drive doesn't stop rotating and windows shows 'its now safe to remove'.

How is it safe to remove when the drive hasn't stopped rotating? That means the drive might suffer a damage if is still plug out! :S

 

[Crazy_Eddy]

Safely remove simply means it has unmounted the drive and read/write operations have been disabled.

Your drive will keep spinning as long as there's power being supplied to your USB port.

 

[Bluffmaster]

If you're not using the drive than you need not Safely remove it, you can just unplug the drive but its usually recommended to use Safely remove feature because it lets you know if some program is using the drive in the background.

 

[Value Buyer]

@spawnfreak the most secure way to ensure the safety shut down the pc and switch off power supply to it then remove external HDD.If you are using external HDD for backup purpose you won't mind to shut down pc but any other purpose you may not properly do this like we are doing with pendrive.Few devices(digicam,sony music player ...) I couldn't get safely remove device option but I am closing explorer to ensure the drive is not listed in that .

 

[MaRKiV]

As to OPs point of concern, the spinning of the Ext hdd, is because of the flaw in Seagate's power down time out logic. Even when the Seagate GoFlex hdds have been disabled through Safely Remove Disk option, the disc keeps spinning because it is powered on until, the power time out period.

This is not the case in all Ext HDDs, WD powers down the moment you execute the safely Remove Device.