Can you use an external hard drive actively?

[xdagex]

So I bought an external 2TB hardrive and it connects via USB. I was wondering if I can just leave it plugged in and use it as another hard drive on my PC? Not sure if external hard drives aren't designed for that or wouldn't be reliable as that?

 

[why_wolf]

Yeah if you want to. Can't guarantee that yours doesn't have some sort of power saving mode that will knock it offline after you don't use for some amount of time.

I wouldn't try to run programs off of it though.

 

[asoroka]

You can run programs off a usb3 with minimal performance degradation.

The big problem is bumping the enclosure while disk is spinning or unplugging.

If you want external storage you are better off getting a NAS that can be kept safe and out of the way, or cloud storage.

Alternately mount the hdd inside your PC.

The main reason for having a usb external is to have portable data, either to move from one machine to another or to use as an offsite backup.