How to best remove eSATA drive?

I guess I am used to removing a drive when done on USB...and I used to do this with eSATA. However, while I can still do this on USB is there any way to remove my eSATA drive when I am done? Some have said you do not need to in Win 10 and we can just shut it down and others say to use software like Hotswap.

Does anyone have the answer?

MPSAN said:

I guess I am used to removing a drive when done on USB...and I used to do this with eSATA. However, while I can still do this on USB is there any way to remove my eSATA drive when I am done? Some have said you do not need to in Win 10 and we can just shut it down and others say to use software like Hotswap.

Does anyone have the answer?

Pull it out when the PC is off.

Actually that is what I did. I shutdown the system and then turned it off, but there has to be a better way isn't there?

MPSAN said:

Actually that is what I did. I shutdown the system and then turned it off, but there has to be a better way isn't there?

If your motherboard has a hotswap feature, that is one safe way. But I still don"t trust it. It may not affect the system but it will affect the hard drive. It makes the hard drive prone to errors. So I think the safest way to pull it out is when the power is off.

whs said:

Don't you have a "safely remove" in the task tray.

Yes, but it seems to be for USB only.

If your eSata enclosure sees an on/off switch you first simply turn the switch off. You can use the Safety remove to eject the enclosure but won't make a difference as far as the drive is concerned since once that is powered off you should have heard the disconnect wav file go off. When turning the drive back on the wav file here would be the Addams Family butler Lurch sounding off! "You Rang!"

Once the drive is turned off the enclosure is then ejected with the Safely remove option to insure no glitched on the C drive as far as OS glitches while even that would tend to be rare. The external drive already being turned off however wouldn't see any disk errors simply since it wouldn't even be running at the time. Have an external usb/eSata fan cooled enclosure just bought lately to replace and older usb only enclosure now in use on another system with the on/off switch and Lurch ringing! yet to be plugged into one of the eSata ports on the main case when getting around to plugging those cables into the board.

Well, I do have the Antec enclosure for the drive attached to eSATA. It does have a power switch. Turning off write caching on that drive may work, but wouldn't I need to do that each time I connect it? I am only planning to use this once or twice a month.

So, am I correct in assuming that if I wait 5 seconds or so after the write completes it is OK to just turn off power to this enclosure?