EXT HDD. Should it stay always on?

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I've just bought an external Maxtor OneTouch III 500GB FW800, and I have one question regarding ext hdd's.

It's been said that, switching hdds on and off everytime may cause malfunctioning. (don't know if it's phisically or in the file structure).

I was thinking...should I leave my HDD always on, even if I unplug the firewire connection (if I want to get around with my mbp)?

Any ideas?
 
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No, you will only corrupt your harddrive if you unplug it without ejecting it from your OS first (drag the hdd icon to the trash/eject symbol).

Once it's been ejected and you've unplugged the firewire cable you can safely turn it off.
 
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Drives also spin themselves down into a sleep state if they aren't accessed for a certain amount of time.
 
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andrebnu
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ok, thanks both for replying!!
 
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I have a Westrn Digital external, and leave it on permanantly. As has been said, they spin down to rest, and spin up again when you access data from them.
It's better to leave them on in my opinion, less wear and tear on components.
 
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I'm glad this topic has been raised, because I'm wondering if you should leave the external HD on even if you put your Mac into sleep mode. Any thoughts?
 
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Well, if the external drive is attached when the Mac goes to sleep, you should leave the external on. When you wake the Mac, it's going to look for the external drive, and if it's not there your Mac will complain about it.
 
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I rarely turn anything electronic off, to include an external HD.

On the topic of turning off any type of media before ejecting it... I always kind of felt like that was a myth. They say "your data may be corrupted", but that's only the case if you were actively writing to the disk. It's good practice to safely eject everything, but not completely necessary in my opinion.
 

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