external hard drive question

[fjs08]

I just received my Western Digital My Book external Hard drive. Works great. But how do I go about shutting that down in the morning without shutting down the Mac. I start everything up, work a while, then head off to the office. SHOULD I shut everything down, and then restart the Mac at the office, or can I just put the Mac to sleep and shut the power off to everything else?? I don't want to screw up the external hard drive.
Thanks.

Frank

 

[4np]

Normally, just drag it to your trash bin to 'eject' the harddisk (like you would to with any other device) and just turn the harddisk off after that.

 

[blodwyn]

I just received my Western Digital My Book external Hard drive. Works great. But how do I go about shutting that down in the morning without shutting down the Mac. I start everything up, work a while, then head off to the office. SHOULD I shut everything down, and then restart the Mac at the office, or can I just put the Mac to sleep and shut the power off to everything else?? I don't want to screw up the external hard drive.
Thanks.

Frank

The MyBook's shut themselves down when you unmount them, so no need to drop the power to them. Just eject them from your Mac, unplug the USB/ FW cable, sleep your Mac and head to the office. Just make sure you eject the MyBook before you pull the USB/FW cable otherwise data corruption is possible - unlikely but possible.