Encypted External

[Tech198]

Does anyone know why when you are ejecting non-encrypted usb drives the drive spins down (assuming it ejects *both* the volume, and the disc,), yet on encrypted drives, it only ejects the volume from the desktop ?

eg. the drive is still spinning, but not mounted.. yet i need to go into Disc Utility to "eject" the disk.

I always do this, because i'm worried i'll corrupt drive as the drive is not off. its just unmounted

Running MacOS Sierra 10.12.3

 

[DeltaMac]

If the drive is ejected, it is unmounted, so the drive might still be powered on, but not available to the system.
So, there's little likelihood of any damage to the drive.
If you don't want it to run, then simply unplug the drive from the port. It's not mounted, so no harm will come to it (or the system)

I can't explain why there might be a difference in spin-down between encrypted or non-encrypted drives.
The main idea is to know that the drive is either mounted, or it's not mounted. If it is not mounted, but still spinning, there's no reason you can't just unplug it.