Legit Reviews

Is it okay to leave an external drive powered on all the time? I'm not writing to/reading from it all the time; actually now that I've put what I wanted to on it (movies and anime) I'm not going to be reading to/writing from it frequently at all. Nevertheless, I don't want to kill it. The drive sits on top of my Thermaltake Armor case in a room that is almost always air conditioned (dorms FTW, just this once).

Is it in its own caddy with external power or something? What interface is it connected with?

My WD MyBook with external power spins down when the PC is off, so it's left on at the wall all the time.

Dan

I leave my 3.5" external running 24/7. It has its own power supply, I also have a 2.5" drive that I leave hooked up 24/7. I have automated backups run to it.

If you can feel is vibrating after like 30 minutes of inactivity turn it off. I use a Tagan Icy Box IB390 has an off switch in the back. I generally keep it off unless I need it, it spins down but it's got my OP Sys backup on it. If I get hit by a bad virus and it's on that might not be good.

For data and music though if it spins down it shouldn't be an issue.

The external drive cases I've seen run a bit warmer that a internal drive with halfway good air flow, I myself switch mine off when not in use (3 of them). But I'm also all about saving power when I can as well.

Same as Dan, I've got Western Digital My Books and the hard drives power down after they're not in use for some time so I just leave them on 24/7.

I've got a Seagate 320gb external drive and it doesnt seem like the thing ever shuts down while the computer is running, I used to have a WD My Book 250gb drive and you could hear that power down after about 10-15 mins of inactivity. I wonder, like the poster was originally inquiring, if it is significantly more burdensome to have the hd running all the time, if so maybe I should unplug it when I'm not using it for a while... any suggestions?