USB always plugged in

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[CWBillow]

If I’m not R/W to the drive but a few times a day, can I just leave it plugged in without any increased risk of file or hardware damage?

Chuck Billow

• This topic was modified 5 months, 2 weeks ago by CWBillow.

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My 4TB T7 external SSD is plugged 24/7 for the last year without files or hardware damage.

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TechTango

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[CWBillow]

Alex5723 wrote:

My 4TB T7 external SSD is plugged 24/7 for the last year without files or hardware damage.

Which means absolutely nothing.

CWBillow wrote:

If I’m not R/W to the drive but a few times a day, can I just leave it plugged in without any increased risk of file or hardware damage?

• This topic was modified 5 months, 2 weeks ago by CWBillow.

If you’re looking for reasoned replies, best to describe your home situation, occupiers and locale. More detail, more accuracy, more useful.

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satrow, my situation is fairly “normal” in that it is in my home, on a PC that nobody by me has access.  I was just “hoping” I could plug the USB in and “forget” about it until the day I needed the info that had been (repeatedly) backed up on it.  Living in Las Vegas, the climate is very dry and for the most part “unseasonal”.

When I see ads for USB drive they talk about thousands or writes before failure.  So I should be fairly secure, should I not?

Chuck Billow

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satrow

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Yes, you should be fairly safe but – it might only take one trip/stumble to dislodge a cable or drive, perhaps there’s a faulty ground connection somewhere – being 100% sure and safe is just about impossible, only you know your building and securing it cannot be done remotely.

Do you have a trusted friend who could come over and slam a few doors, bump into some furniture, test your wall sockets? Just to give you a different angle.

Do you do all your own cleaning?

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CWBillow wrote:

“forget” about it until the day I needed the info that had been (repeatedly) backed up on it

Or the day the power surge takes out the PC and the USB backup drive.
I’d leave it disconnected until required. (My backup disks live in a fireproof safe.)

cheers, Paul

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[CWBillow]

CWBillow wrote:

If I’m not R/W to the drive but a few times a day, can I just leave it plugged in without any increased risk of file or hardware damage?

• This topic was modified 5 months, 2 weeks ago by CWBillow.

My opinion is… YOU may not be reading/writing to a USB-connected external drive (HDD or SSD)… but the OS (host) almost certainly is, even if the data filestream is ignored by the client (USB device) filesystem.

Windows uses NTFS – a journalling file system (think ‘banking systems which monitor all financial transactions in real-time’) – so SYSTEM keeps several data filestreams open no matter what you do or don’t.

The filestreams are mostly continual backups of the metadata used to maintain data integrity, including the registry… which the OS accesses absolutely continually.

If you use something like Lockhunter and point it at an external drive then it will show you SYSTEM’s continual interraction with external storage using a journalling filesystem like NTFS or ExFat.

For example, here’s the datastreams to an external SSD in an enclosure:

(My understanding is that the highlit datastream is the one safeguarding the registry from any possible corruption.)

(If the external storage is NOT using a journalling filesystem – like FAT32, for example – then the metadata will have no effect on data integrity, so you’ll need to use ‘Safe Eject’.)

You made no mention of whether the external drive is an SSD or a ‘spinner’ HDD. No doubt you’ll have seen mention of the potential risk of continual file writes to SSDs shortening their lives, albeit not so much these days. It depends on the age of the SSD.

Hope this helps…

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OK thanks guys.

Chuck Billow

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