When To Shutt Off External Hard Drives

[Wendy]

I’m usually careful to turn off (either with off knob or by disconnecting USB cable from my PC) external hard drives whenever I’ve finished using them but am still using the computer. I thought this was a good practice to extend the life of the drives, instead of leaving them running until I shutdown the PC. Sorry if this is such an obvious, basic “hard drive 101” thing to do but I just want to confirm that my thinking is right and that what I’m doing is best for the external hard drives. And not unneeded extra work I imagined I should do.

[Wendy]

Please CLOSE this thread (I don’t know how to do that). I should not have posted it.

[jmarket]

As you wish Wendy, should you want it reopened in the future please pm a staff member who will re open it for you.

Can I suggest that particularly if you are using external hard drives it’s best to “Safely remove them” meaning to disconnect them from Windows before physically unplugging them. You may know of and use Windows built in “Safely remove USB” app but its common to baulk at disconnecting sometimes.

Have a look at this guide HERE which is still current and an app I have used for many years. Whilst it is not foolproof it often works where the windows app fails. Let us know if you need any more info?