I have an IcyDock MB-664US-1S external hard drive enclosure attached to the back eSATA port of an Asus P5W-DH motherboard.

I boot two different OS's from my PC's internal drives (which attached using regular SATA). One OS is Windows 2000 (USP 5.1) and the other is Linux Mint (4.0 Daryna).

I've noticed that whenever I click the shutdown icon in Linux mint, the external IcyDock enclosure powers down when the PC switches off, however when doing the equivalent from Windows 2000, the PC powers off but the IcyDock enclosure remains powered and running indefinitely.

Does any one know why one OS should result in the external enclosure powering down while the other doesn't? I am at a total loss to even know where to start looking for an answer to this?

Any advice gratefully received. Thanks.

My first guess is that your Linux is a more recent operating system, and therefore sends a signal to any attached devices telling them to power down. Windows 2000, being a slightly older operating system (i.e much older) likely lacks this feature.