External Hard Drive

[Tosh McCaber]

I'm about to purchase an external 1Gb hard drive, to provide an external back-up for my data. I already have a 200Gb "C" drive, with two other auxillary internal 400Gb back up drives, (automatic back-ups to one of them every day), so this one will be used on a weekly/ two weekly basis for added comfort.

My question is- Should I disconnect it, except when I am backing up, or will it do any harm to leave it connected all the time?

[Sprogget]

I have accidentally left mine hooked up for a week in the past with no problems.

IIRC Google published research a while back that examined the failure rate of hdd's in their data centres (at the time they were using off the shelf ordinary hdd's) that said something along the lines of the failure rates incurred through thermal shock of drives heating up & cooling down was not significant, but age of the drive was more of a factor in failure rates, something like 2% in year one, 8% in year two and so on.

[HKPAX]

Tosh: I use an external drive for same reasons - back-up. Keeping it totally separate from your PC greatly reduces your risk of total data loss (fire, large meteorite or stuff being nicked etc).

[Jofm5]

Tosh,

There is no problem in leaving the drive connected whatsoever. I think my maxtor has been connected for around 18 months now.

I generally leave my machine running for a number of reasons - so all the drives will be spinning most of the time.

The biggest stress on a hard drive is on it's spin up - that is also when it will also draw the most power (If you observe a raid array it will start the disks one by one so as not to overload the PSU). A hard disk that is left spinning will wear out slower than a hard disk that is constantly being stopped and started.

If your machine is stopped and started regularly you may wish to leave the drive disconnected until you require it so the wear rate is different from the local disk - but there is no real issue is leaving an external disk connected.

[Compass Call]

Hi Tosh
Didn't know that 1GB hard drives were still made:)LOL

CC

[Tosh McCaber]

Oops- Ok- Ok- 1Tb!!