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Do you keep your ext. HDD on or off ?

N

Nickm4N

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 29, 2009
34
0
Do you ever turn off your external hard drive? I got mine (LaCie 1 TB, USB) always connected when I'm at my desk and the HDD is always powered, meaning I don't turn it off at the back (there is the power switch).

The HDD goes into sleep mode whenever it's not doing anything, but still, is this bad for my ext. HDD to keep it always powered? Or should I turn it off when not using it?
 
Nickm4N said:
Do you ever turn off your external hard drive? I got mine (LaCie 1 TB, USB) always connected when I'm at my desk and the HDD is always powered, meaning I don't turn it off at the back (there is the power switch).

The HDD goes into sleep mode whenever it's not doing anything, but still, is this bad for my ext. HDD to keep it always powered? Or should I turn it off when not using it?
Click to expand...

Mine is always hooked to the wall. Its a WD 1TB MyBook. It only goes online when the USB is hooked up.
 
I have a WD 500GB external for my Time Machine backups. Always powered, only spins up when connected to the computer.
 
Always on, important since I store a lot of my files on the drive - makes no sense to turn it off and not have access ;)
 
Nickm4N said:
Do you ever turn off your external hard drive? I got mine (LaCie 1 TB, USB) always connected when I'm at my desk and the HDD is always powered, meaning I don't turn it off at the back (there is the power switch).

The HDD goes into sleep mode whenever it's not doing anything, but still, is this bad for my ext. HDD to keep it always powered? Or should I turn it off when not using it?
Click to expand...

Kinda hard to do Time Machine backups if it's powered off completely. :D That's the main use of my external HD.
 
I have a Lacie two big triple drive that sleeps when not being used. It wakes up for Time Machine backups and whenever I use it. It also powers on and off when the computer sleeps and wakes up.
 
LaCie D2 250GB FW800 ON since 29. oct 2004!
Never crashed, never lost any data.

(Well technically it's been disconnected and off a few times, but it's been on for 99% of the time)
 
What annoys me is that since I turned off the "put the hard disk to sleep when not in use" option in energy preferences (because I now have an SSD which I don't want to sleep but be constantly attentive to my data requests), also my external Time Machine hard drive never goes to sleep.

Why doesn't this preference pane distinguish between internal and external hard drives ? Or better still, why can't there be a list of all hard drives ever connected and I can choose for each one ... down the road I'd like to replace the optical drive in my Macbook with a hard drive for extra storage, but I'd like that one to go to sleep as well.
 
rgarjr said:
Just kind of curious what type of data you guys need to frequently access on those ext HDDs.
Click to expand...

One of the hard drives is my iTunes library, one is my LightRoom library, another is my finished photos hard drive and the last is for storage of miscellaneous files. The only thing I have on the internal hard drive is the OS and the applications.
 
Nickm4N said:
Do you ever turn off your external hard drive? I got mine (LaCie 1 TB, USB) always connected when I'm at my desk and the HDD is always powered, meaning I don't turn it off at the back (there is the power switch).

The HDD goes into sleep mode whenever it's not doing anything, but still, is this bad for my ext. HDD to keep it always powered? Or should I turn it off when not using it?
Click to expand...

i only turn my two external drives on when needed. 400GB is my time machine, and i do it once every few days. 1.5TB is my storage drive, and only if im downloading something or i need to access something ill turn it on. i also hate how if i dont use an external hard drive for a while, it will spin down, but then spin back up. i wish it wouldnt do that until i accessed it.
 
secretanchitman said:
i also hate how if i dont use an external hard drive for a while, it will spin down, but then spin back up. i wish it wouldnt do that until i accessed it.
Click to expand...

I also hate that - it's a flaw in OS X in my opinion. E.g., when you want to save a file from an application like Word, it doesn't let you do it until it has spinned up all sleeping hard drives. However, usually I only want to save it on my internal drive. This should be easy to change ... do it, Apple !
 
kraftzwerg said:
I also hate that - it's a flaw in OS X in my opinion. E.g., when you want to save a file from an application like Word, it doesn't let you do it until it has spinned up all sleeping hard drives. However, usually I only want to save it on my internal drive. This should be easy to change ... do it, Apple !
Click to expand...

It happens sometimes, but usually I don't have to wait for the drives to spin up.

I have only one connected directly (a FW800 HD) and the rest of my HDs are just for backup purposes and they are hooked to another computer and I access them thru gbit ethernet.
 
I use a 500GB G-Drive mini connected through FW800. The drive has inactive spin-down functionality so I leave the switch in the 'on' position almost all the time. It spins up when the computer comes out of sleep, when I access the drive, and when performing Time Machine backups. If I had a drive that didn't have spin-down functionality I would probably switch it off when not in-use to save power, and wear and tear on the drive.
 
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