How does one safely power down a Maxtor drive?

When I started writing this blog, I promised to flush out bad design. Well, the Maxtor Network Attached Storage back-up drive (model H01R300) I lambasted  a few months ago still confounds me. Why? I can't shut it off w/o pulling the power cord which makes me very nervous with a 300GB drive. That's could have been what killed the first unit that I returned.

I press the alleged power switch, hold it in for five seconds like the instructions say and it powers down. But when I release the power button, it comes back on. I am on a rampage to get the kilwatt hours at my home below a grand and have replaced incandescents light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and shut down the hot tub for a month. For sure, the drive is not the worst electricity guzzler in the house, but the noisy hard drive motor is a constant reminder something is switched on when it needn't be.