just got new External Hard Drive - some basic questions!

[ero87]

Hey friends,

I just bought a G-Drive for my iMac, just plugged it in.. it shows up on my desktop, woohoo! I have some basic questions.

I bought this to use as incase my iMac's harddrive fails. So basically, i'm going to copy my music & photos onto the external harddrive and then i'm done. i'll update once a month maybe. So do I need to constantly leave the harddrive on?

Do I need to leave it plugged in?

Any other tips i should know? Thanks!

[Plymouthbreezer]

I leave my 250GB WD on all the time... I don't think it will harm it too much.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most drives will park themselves when not in use for a certain period of time.

Another benefit of leaving it on is that you can copy over files as you go, and not worry about updating everything at the same time. The WD Drive appears below my main Hard Drive all the time, making access far more convenient.

[Verto]

Hey friends,

I just bought a G-Drive for my iMac, just plugged it in.. it shows up on my desktop, woohoo! I have some basic questions.

I bought this to use as incase my iMac's harddrive fails. So basically, i'm going to copy my music & photos onto the external harddrive and then i'm done. i'll update once a month maybe. So do I need to constantly leave the harddrive on?

Do I need to leave it plugged in?

Any other tips i should know? Thanks!

If this is meant to be a backup, I would unmount it and unplug it except for when you are copying files. Leaving it plugged in all the time exposes your backup to a lot of things - power outages, etc, which could affect both your iMac and external.

[killmoms]

Since you're using it to backup your Mac, make sure it's formatted as an HFS+ volume, not the PC FAT32 format.

[ero87]

Since you're using it to backup your Mac, make sure it's formatted as an HFS+ volume, not the PC FAT32 format.

what does this mean, and how can i tell?