Many users are confused about whether it is advisable to keep the external hard drive connected all the time. Therefore, in this article, we will look at this issue and make a detailed discussion.
When it comes to data protection, making regular data backups will occur to your minds definitely. It’s because that data backups will be able to make great effects in data recovery. For example, if your original Outlook PST file is corrupt, you still can restore corrupt Outlook data from backups without breaking a sweat.
Nowadays, many users select to use external drive for data backups, no matter a hard disk drive or USB flash drive. In this case, for the sakes of convenience, you maybe would like to leave the external hard drive connected 24/7. But you still have many concerns about it, wondering if it is right or not. Now, we will discuss its advantages and disadvantages elaborately thereinafter.
Advantages
Of course, leaving external drive has some merits, as follows.
1. Convenient for Manual Backup
One of the huge advantages for keeping the external drive connected all the time is convenience. More specifically, in this case, every time when you make backups manually, you don’t need to plug in the external drive each time.
2. Necessary for Automatic Backup
Moreover, if you’ve configured your computer to do data backup automatically to the external drive, you should ensure that the drive must be connected when backup will start at the scheduled time. So as to prevent forgetting this, the best way is to leave the drive connected all the time.
Disadvantages
Although users indeed can benefits from this, it will bring many potential threats too, like the followings.
1. Virus or Malware Infection
One of the most serious threats is the viruses and malware. We will surely do a lot of deals online. However, in the contemporary era, viruses and malware are so powerful that they can attack your PC and data like a breeze, such as damaging or encrypting your data. Therefore, if you leave your backup drive connected all the time, the drive data will be in such dangers as well.
2. Unexpected Factors like Fires or Thefts
Furthermore, if you simply have one data backup, you should pay much attention to safeguarding it. In this situation, you should store the external hard drive to a securer offsite location instead of onsite. Otherwise, if any unexpected disasters occur, like fires or thefts, in the place where your PC positions, the onsite backup drive will suffer too.
3. Damage If Suffering Sudden Power Failures
What’s more, if the external hard drive that you are using will be powered on automatically as computer boots, such as USB flash drive, it will be vulnerable to power failures, no matter surge or outage. It means that such drives will tend to damage assuming it frequently encountered such events.
On basis of what mentioned above, you can analyze the pros and cons and make the decision as per your own needs.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including recover Sql Server and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com