Is it safe having the “Documents” folder on an external hard drive?

[Filip_24]

Is it safe having the “Documents” folder on an external hard drive?

I’m thinking of having an external Seagate 2TB hard drive to store most of my documents and a few other things too. I’m not planning on traveling a lot, but I’d like to bring it if I’m going over to a friends house or a music studio.

Would it be safe having my Documents folder on that external drive?

 

[The Paladin]

well windows permits you to redirect your "documents" etc. folders to another location, for example in my case my "document folder is a link to a my internal D" 1tb Drive. So the pure answer to your question is yes it is feasible without a problem.

The technical answer is a little more like; yes you can but the problem is an external drive spins down and up when needed, and there will be lag not only when your document folder is access but each time the system checkes on the allocation table (which part of it will be pointed to your external drive.)causing pauses at any time windows decides to perform this check.

Maybe get a 2TB drive and put it inside your computer, or use the external as a "backup" ( I use an external for my documents backup, I have a simple batch files that copies all files in Documents to my external drive... ) and I run it on a schedule (windows schedule function once a week)

 

[USAFRet]

Yes you can. How exactly depends on your specific OS:
Win 7 & 8: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1834397/ssd-redirecting-static-files.html
Win 8.1 & 10: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2024314/windows-redirecting-folders-drives.html


However, taking it to a friends house and plugging it into his PC will cause permissions issues. That "Documents" folder (or Music/Pictures/etc) are tied to your user on your system.

Have that music in some folder other than in your Libraries.

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

Why not just leave the Documents folder alone and start a new folder structure on the external drive?

 

[phaelax]

Let's hope your external drive always mounts with the same drive letter