External HDD...stupid question?

TheAlex · 28 Dec 2006 at 23:02

I'm about to purchase my first external drive for backup. It needs to be USB and I just wanted to check they can be disconnected from the PC and power supply as soon as the data has been transferred?

semi-pro waster · 28 Dec 2006 at 23:05

If you are going to be writing important data then I'd use the "Safely Remove Hardware" option that appears in the bottom right as a tray icon if you don't already and also don't enable delayed writes (e.g. waits until system isn't busy to write data) but other than that yes you can disconnect the hard drive as soon as you are sure data is written.

squiffy · 28 Dec 2006 at 23:07

I've disconnected the USB data cable without using the safetly remove hardware, usually because windows doesn't want to remove it (even though nothing is sharing the drive) No data loss, yet.

semi-pro waster · 28 Dec 2006 at 23:12

squiffy said:
I've disconnected the USB data cable without using the safetly remove hardware, usually because windows doesn't want to remove it (even though nothing is sharing the drive) No data loss, yet.

I do as well, albeit with a small USB flash drive not an external hard drive but it isn't good practice so that is why I wouldn't advise others to do it. A case of "do as I say...." if you will.

TheAlex · 28 Dec 2006 at 23:12

Thanks. I always remove my USB pens and CompactFlash cards without selecting "safely remove hardware" which one of my mates was quite surprised about, I didn't even know about it.

Justintime · 29 Dec 2006 at 00:14

Know about, never used it much tbh. Got a few 2.5" laptop hdd caddies i use a lot and never had a failure.