Safely remove HDD/Flash Drive from Strong STB

[gordon_s1942]

I have a Strong SRT5430 HD Terrestial STB and last night I attached an 80GB HP portable HDD via the USB port and recorded a program.
Now, how do I remove the DVR from the STB as there are no instructions in the handbook.
A friend suggested turning the STB off (standby) but after 10 minutes the 'Blue' working light on the HDD is still lit so thats not working.
There is no switch on the HDD so short of turning the power off completely on the STB which seems a bit extreme, how do I disconnect it?

[Skepticist]

I have the same STB plus an earlier one (5428) and they both have no facility for shutting down the external drive. I assume they're simply relying on you not actually writing to the drive when shutting down so let the HDD take care of itself. I simply unplug the drives if I want to process the recording on the PC (say to edit out adds or change format etc) and I've never had any errors attributable to doing that.

I wouldn't recommend leaving the HDD plugged in with the box in 'standby' because of the extra load on the box power supply which will cook the PS caps that much faster. In practice, most USB powered external drives take a little too much power and a power injector is needed for reliable recording because the STB is only rated at something like 8W max. I only plug in the external drive when actually recording something or playing it back and shut the box off at the mains when not using it after experiences with fried electrolytic caps in boxes that are left on 24/7.

[Skepticist]

Additionally just found that even with a USB HDD that appears to record/playback OK, fast forward/reverse must consume just a little too much power and causes a freeze-up but using a power injector solved that problem. Because of the way they get used (hot-plugging) the USB HDDs obviously are self parking on loss of power and the 'remove device' option on a PC is only to ensure all cached writing processes are completed prior to unplugging. The USB 5V supply is always on, even when most PCs are shut down and manufacturers of external drives have different attitudes to driving the indicator LEDs on the drives with some having it always on if 5V is present and others only lighting the LED when data transfer is active. Some even combine the 2 eg my Seagate Freeagent drive lights the LED steady with only 5V present and blinks it when the data lines are active.

The only way to shut it down is to simply pull the USB plug out, there is no safer method provided for. Could be they're fitted with a supercap or similar which automatically parks the heads on loss of power and I use a lot of them with never a failure attributable to loss of power (to date) unless the power failed in the middle of writing a file and then only that file would be corrupted which is to be expected.