What's the best way to safely eject external backup drive

I just bought a new Seagate external drive and made my first backup. Their website said the best way to disconnect it is to drag the desktop icon to the trash. I apparently ruined my previous backup drive (Adata) by right-clicking and selecting "Eject" from the context menu. This same "Eject" option is available for the Seagate drive and I read on this forum that it's a safe way to disconnect the drive. However, after using my Adata drive for a couple of years and getting frequent warnings saying the it hadn't been ejected properly after the previous backup, last week it just wouldn't work anymore and backups simply failed. So I'm not feeling confident about how to safely disconnect my new hard drive... Thanks for any advice.

Things can happen to drives after a few years of year of use, even if the hardware itself is OK. The directory structure can get corrupted, etc. Choosing "eject" rather than dragging the icon to the trash isn't going to make a difference. I think Seagate tells users to do it because it's perhaps the simplest, most obvious method. Disk Utility can usually fix minor problems with your directory structure or volume info.
One problem with external drives is that some external enclosures are a lot better than others. So a drive can seem to be failing when in fact the enclosure itself has a problem. It's a good idea to have a spare dock or enclosure on hand to test for this possibility. A spare known-good cable is something else to keep in your "toolkit".

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