Should I turn off my external hard drive when not in use?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

A note on spin downs: Beware that Desktop HD's are rated notoriously low on spinup/down cycles (~3000 for a select few), so constantly spinning them up/down will kill them in short order.

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695]

Laptop drives, OTOH are supposed to have much better spinup/down specs...

I own a Mac and with my external drive not having an on/off switch it doesnt really matter. My external is mostly for music and etc for my ipod but i dont see why turning it off would be essential anyway.

Thanks for the information. I just bought an external IDE hard disk USB enclosure and installed an extra hard disk I had laying around in it. Te enclosure has an on/off switch, so I am contemplating if I should turn it off after I have powered down my computer or not. I am tempted to turn it off since my other hard disks are being cycled like this and they have had good life spans.

** I am using an iMac
My external hard drive has been partitioned into 3 sections.

BEFORE I TURN OFF MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE - do I need to 'eject'each disk partition on the external hard drive - before I turn off my iMac ?

- Is it similar to 'ejecting' a USB storage device, before removing it, so as to avoid the LOSS OF INFORMATION, that can occur if you do not use this sequence before removing the device.

This information is not to be found in the user manual, and I get a little pissed off with these manufacturers in that they can be quite scant in the info they provide. Especially considering the consequences !!!

I would be truly grateful for a reply.

John

Do hard drives shut down when my system goes into stand-by or hibernation? The Power Options on my laptop allow stand-by, hibernation and shutting down the hard drives after various lengths of time. If I have it going into stand by or hibernation after let's say 20 minuted idle, is there any reason to tell it to shut down the hard drives? Also, I have my laptop set to go into hibernation when I close the lid. I do this sometimes overnight and sometimes I do this for days at a time. Is this wise?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Yes - disks powerdown durign standby, hibernation and of
couse, power off.

Leo

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFICjABCMEe9B/8oqERAt6rAJoD5HH9iN4b37kdHScXJsMVazPNWgCfXsPw
/eg1gZq7FNMbvHQE2Iw1tSQ=
=8G3q
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Hi, I have a Seagate 300G external hard rive which works perfectly except:

1. When you turn it on it is fine.
2. When you turn it off and then turn on again (after any period of time), it doesn't turn on.
3. To turn it back on again, I take the power cable out and then put it back in again and it works fine.

This needs to be repeated every time I switch it off and on again without taking out the power cable.

The drive is about 8 months old and I have been having this problem for few months now.

Any ideas, why it is behaving like this?

Thanks.

I have a 1TB Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition. Should I keep that on? I use it sometimes. It is mostly for storage....

Is it better to turn it off using the safely remove hardware or just hitting the power button on the drive?

Also, is there any part in the bios that allows Firewire on like USB Legacy support? Because I'm having problems when starting the computer, if the drive is on - it'll freeze and the Windows XP loading screen and just sit there for hours and never load... but when it is off it'll go through that fine.... I called WD but they weren't much help...

Thanks!

This article is misleading and incorrect for many users.

Many of the most inexpensive external drives. Which likly make up the majority of external drives sold have NO power management system and will overheat and crash if use all the time. They run at full spin all the time.

non-savy user who just buy the cheapest external they can and don't do anything to keep it from overheating.will usally find that in will crash within 3-4 months.

Check the manual of your external drive. it will tell you what is your best corse of action.

I have a WD 2.0 ext dr. It must be a very early model as it's not shown pon the WD product pages, it's several years old.
It doesn't shot down with the XP PC, the green light stays on. I put an ext on/off switch to the WD power supply. Don't like using this because the drive shuts down really hard.
Not sure it needs to be shut of at the power supply.
When it sits for some period of time and I fire up the beast some kind of bar red runs across the moniter. I now asssume the drive shaft has disconnected and is now reconnecting. After the red bar goes away the WD works.
Have had this unit for several years and it has always run when asked to.

To post a comment on "Should I turn off my external hard drive when not in use?", please return to that article's main page.