Storage forum: Leaving External Hard Drives On Always--Is this risky?

Today's drives are built to withstand 24/7 usage. Some do and some don't. New school says do.

and life goes on...

Jack

I use my external hd for backup storage (music files, picture files) plus a backup image of my system file (Acronis True Image) to use to restore the system in the event of a catastrophe. A lightening strike, or sudden power surge, could be a catastrophe taking the main hd and the external hd disc down at the same time. If my external hd is off, I have that margin of safety. Turning the external hd disc on and off for occasional use is not a biggie. Just be sure to sure to use the ''safe to remove external device'' icon on the task bar to make sure all files are closed when you disconnect the external hard drive and shut its power down.

I have tryed to Safely Remove the External Hard Drive...But like you I also get the same screen ever time...and "HELP" I want to safely Shut my External Hard Drive down.
Hard Drives Disc's all SPIN Around on Ball Bearings and in the same Lube...some bearings might last for years....some not! depends on the bearings and the oil....and each can or will Break Down in Due Time.....i want mine to last a long long time.
Thanks all
Crash in Kansas.

I always got the same message too. It's very misleading. In Windows Explorer, simply select a different folder, so that Windows Explorer isn't showing you the list of files on your drive. Then you won't get a warning when you try to shut down the drive.

From my experience, files I put on a jump drive are usually highly critical. Don't just unplug it. If I had to choose between powering down or just pulling it, I'd definitely power down.

I think the reason some of you get an error message is because you have selected write caching on the disk which i believe is the reason you have that message as there is an option for quick removal which should stop that ,but don't quote me on it...lol...

click on
"my computer"
right click the ext drive and then click on properties
click on the "hardware tab" then click on the properties of that popup then click the policies tab,the rest is self explanatory

I'm certain that for the drives themselves it's better to leave them running all the time. Heads crash when started, or the electronics are murdered by the sudden power surge. Of course, if you do have power outages, spikes or surges (I don't, didn't have one single power outage or any electrical problem in the 15 years I live in the same place), you could end up with a bunch of fried chips. This summer I didn't switch off my computers during the six weeks I spent abroad (forgot to).
I had a few drive crashes, but only with brand - new drives (easy to replace), and with lots of old drives - but only during the powering-on cycle. OK, it drives the electricity bill up and /or drains the batteries, but the first thing I do when I get to a laptop is to disable the power saving features for the HD.
Now if any consumer product would still be allowing for a very nice gradual spin - up, as old SCSI drives did, or had surge protection built in, I would be a happy person. Having to trash the occassional DVD player or VCR just because these things don't even have a power switch and love to go poof as soon as you move them to the next room drives me mad. Yes, a DVD player is a dirt cheap thing, often cheaper than the (retail, non torrented) DVDisc, but still - why can't the Chinese raise the price by 50 cent and build in a switch?

A good idea, but you need to be careful. Normal "home safes" let temperatures rise to 350 degrees F on the inside during a fire. You need to be sure to use what is called a "media rated" safe. This ensures internal temps don't rise over 125 degrees, which a HDD can live with, not to mention CDs tapes, etc.

The safest solution is to buy a DataFORTRESS. These are hardened HDDs inside of a fire, flood, magnetic, etc. enclosure. Have a look at www.thedatafortress.com If you are really cautious about your data, there's RAID models available.

It's the new hard drives that scare me since my theory of electronics is that if it's defective and going to break, it will usually do it in the first 90 days. The first time I got an external hard drive (attached to a UPS) I gave it a workout the first month or so. I didn't put any risky stuff on it that I didn't have backed up elsewhere, but I left it on for a week and let it download via torrents, etc. On the other hand, I went through periods of just powering up and powering down just sitting there watching TV during the evening. Don't know how reliable my theory is, but one homemade external with a WD HDD did die on me, I got my replacement from the company without any problem, and didn't lose any important data. All the other times, no problems at all. (My favorite external is a WD Dual Option Multimedia Center with card reader and USB hub.)

It's better to leave it in the same state. If it's on, leave it on, if it's off, leave it off. Changing the state puts a "shock" on the system so the more you do it, the more likely it will break.

And put all your equiment on a UPS!

My external HD does not even have a power switch! So the only option for me to turn it off would be to unplug it, or use a power strip. The manufacturer obviously does not see anything wrong with the HD being on all the time, so I do not worry about it. My server in my house is also on 24/7 and has been for years now... never had a problem.

I have two desktops, both with 2 hard drives, three external hard drives, and three DVRs running 24/7 for years with no problems. Everything are on a UPS.

I learned this the hard way (no pun intended). The problem with external hard drives is heat. Hard drives often become unstable and fail when exposed to high temps for long periods of time. External hard drives lack fans or cooling devices to help them maintain low temps, and that can lead to premature crashes and failures. I know because my external crashed last year and took 125gb of data with it (just a backup thank God). This doesn't mean your drive will crash, it just makes it much more likely.

While there are a lot of different ideas about the on/off discussion in regard to an external HDD's longevity, it's really the DATA stored on them that is most important. Of course, if a drive fails, the data generally goes with it, but data can disappear without actual failure of the drive.

I had this happen to me some time ago with an external USB drive on which I had a large number of music files. I was either ripping or transferring files and while I waited for the operation to complete, I moved the external drive case a bit to position it a little better. Instantly the file transfer stopped and when I checked the contents of the drive, I found that everything had become scrambled - lots of weird symbols connecting to essentially nothing. Using a file recovery program resulted in the apparent recovery of most of my files, but when I played them, they were composed of a series of unrelated small bits of music from other songs.

As near as I can figure, my moving the drive caused a momentary break in the USB connection and, since a lot of data were being transferred at that moment, my filing system got really mucked up.

This relates to the current discussion in that the USB connection is vulnerable to disconnections and the more the drive is running, the more opportunity exists for such a situation to occur.

I currently have an external firewire cabinet with four 160 GB drives in it, used primarily for music, graphics and system backups, and it gets turned on only while I'm actually using one of the drives.