External HDD vs Reinstall XP

Just purchased a Maxtor external HDD (100gig Personal Storage USB 2.0) .
Have a question please.
I can't foresee any situation where I would be disconnecting this drive from
the computer while windows is operating, but if I even have to reinstall XP,
what is the safe way to handle this drive?
Is it safe to power down the computer and then unplug the drive from the USB
port, or do I have to use the utility shutdown icon on the taskbar before
shutting down windows for the reboot to the XP CD?
In other words, I'm using this drive along with CDR's for duplicate backup
for data and I sure don't want to lose the external drive's contents by
doing this the wrong way.
Thanks very much
Dudley


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