I'm using a external disk enclosure to access one of my old hard drives via my laptop. When I'm not using that hard drive I want to turn it off so naturally I slide the switch from on to off. Soundwise, the hard drive then goes from vigorous spinning to stone dead. It seems about as crude as pulling the plug out of say your TV as opposed to switching it off manually. I can't find any other way of turning it off other than this on/off switch and I don't want to risk lose my data. I could well be getting in a twist over nothing but the situation is still at hand: I'm no expert on hardware. So this is where I need some valuable input.