A Simple Question Re External Hard Drives.

[Taff]

I've got a 1TB external hard drive to back up my important stuff and to keep photos off my laptop which will hopefully keep it running quicker.

I had assumed (perhaps stupidly) that I could just leave the external hard drive permanently plugged in; after all you don't take the internal hard drive out when you switch the feckin thing off so why disconnect an external one? That was my logic anyway.

Something my boy mentioned though has made me question this logic. He said "An external hard drive is really just a massive memory stick." And having had files corrupted in a card reader years ago, I now always click the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon before disconnecting my fob.

So what's the best thing to do? Can I leave the external hard drive plugged in permanently or not? Please keep this simple folks.

 

[cookie]

it's no problem leaving an external hard drive plugged in 24/7. you should use "Safely Remove Hardware" if you shut it down/disconnect it while the PC is running though.

 

[y2blade]

it's no problem leaving an external hard drive plugged in 24/7. you should use "Safely Remove Hardware" if you shut it down/disconnect it while the PC is running though.

What Cookie said^^^^^

 

[araspitfire]

But remember.... for important stuff. (like your photos)... always have 2 copies on two different (mostly disconnected) drives.

If you are moving the photos to the external disk, and you only have the one copy... then one day you will loose some of your photos.

The reason to keep one of the backup disks mostly disconnected is in case of a power surge, lightning strike or the like...

Also, for REALLY important stuff... it's best to move one of the external disks out of your house completly. That way if you have a house fire.. you still have your memories (and other important documents).

Al...

 

[AberdeenAngus]

or use the cloud

 

[walrus]

You should also remember that there are some nasties, like ransom for instance, which will corrupt or lock every file they can reach including any attached drives so if it's not also backed up separately, disconnect it when you don't need it is the safest way.

 

[Fluffmeister]

or use the cloud

What he said

If you use something like Picasa for example and have a photobucket account or Flickr / dropbox etc etc, it's well worth having a look at this freebie to perform bulk uploads / backups of your pictures to a cloud

http://www.picbackman.com/

As I mentioned, it's free, and pretty simple to use and works with lots of different photo software and cloud systems.

 

[Taff]

... Also, for REALLY important stuff... it's best to move one of the external disks out of your house completly. That way if you have a house fire.. you still have your memories (and other important documents).

Good idea. A bit like keeping one of the office backup tapes in the briefcase.

or use the cloud

Some of it is really sensitive stuff; company accounts, agreements etc. I just don't feel comfortable uploading to a massive friggin computer somewhere that I have no control over.

... If you use something like Picasa for example and have a photobucket account or Flickr / dropbox etc etc, it's well worth having a look at this freebie to perform bulk uploads / backups of your pictures to a cloud .... As I mentioned, it's free, and pretty simple to use and works with lots of different photo software and cloud systems.

It may be free for now, but there are no guarantees surely. My wife lost a load of photos of the kids that she had uploaded to the Kodak server IIRC. Lost the feckin lot.

Sorry, call me old fashioned, but if it's important I like to have it somewhere I can see it and touch it.

 

[Taff]

it's no problem leaving an external hard drive plugged in 24/7. you should use "Safely Remove Hardware" if you shut it down/disconnect it while the PC is running though.

Excuse me for being a computer numpty, but having an external hard drive connected while starting up the computer doesn't do any harm then?

 

[Clive]

Excuse me for being a computer numpty, but having an external hard drive connected while starting up the computer doesn't do any harm then?

Windows doesn't always write data to "drives" immediately - it can "cache" the data - the purpose of "ejecting" (or safely removing) is to force windows to finish clearing out the cache so that e.g. file/data doesn't end up corrupted. When starting up the computer it is unlikely to be trying to write to the external hard drive - but if you did have it connected when starting up, I'd still wait until you are able to "safely remove" it before disconnecting it.