External Hard drive with ON/OFF switch

[shaggyhair]

I've four external hard drives, three of them being mains powered and switched at the outlet socket.

The remaining one, which I purchased three years or so ago, is a 300G Seagate which has a ON/OFF button on the rear.

I have 'Googled' Seagate external drives but cannot find any that for certain, has an ON/OFF switch.

I have found a couple of non Seagate devices, but they were not names familiar to me.

Is anyone aware of a suitable device with an ON/OFF switch and around 500G or more.

I require it for my wife to store her photographs (currently backed up on one of the external drives) but she has so many photos now, she needs her own disc. I don't want her plugging and unplugging USB connectors, so I want to connect it directly in to the computer and let her power it by the ON/OFF switch.

I know the obvious question is why she cannot just turn on a switch at the mains socket. However, I have lots of mains plugs and being a woman she will at some time either turn something on or off by mistake.

My apologies to our female members as I am sure they would never do such a thing.

[ken]

Maplins do 2 SATA drive docking stations. One is E-SATA and the other is USB. They have on/off switches. You can put any SATA drive you like in at any time, both 3½ and 2½ inch. I bought my E-SATA model for £29.99 in a sale, but I think that is the normal price of the USB model. They are much better than the enclosures and it only takes a few seconds to change drives. They dont make them for IDE drives, as you cant hotshoe an IDE drive.

KC

[movieman36]

I believe the Maxtor One Touch series have a power switch. A have a couple of original Maxtor one touch ext HD (about 4 years old now) and they have been great and have a power switch. Need to check though.

MM

[merchant42]

I have just bought a Toshiba 500GB Hi-Speed USB 2 3.5 external HD that has an on/off switch.
Its Plug and Play

[nike]

Why not buy one like KC and I have? They are the best solution going for external H/D backups.

Failing that, if you have any spare IDE hard drives you could use, just buy an external IDE drive case to fit them into. All the external cases have an on/off switch. I have four different brands of them here at present which i'm slowly disposing of in favour of my new SATA docking station.....