Must I unplug a USB external HD from my PC before I shut down the PC?

[Clueless in Seattle]

My only previous experience with an external hard drive was with a Buffalo brand 300GB that I bought something like ten years ago. Right now, as I type this, that drive is plugged into my old hand-me-down Hewlett Packard PC and has been plugged in there for the last four-and-a-half years. And before being plugged into this PC, it did yeoman service plugged into another hand-me-down PC for five or more years with nary a hiccup. The only time I unplugged it was to transfer the data from that PC to my current PC. So I just assumed that that’s how an external HD was supposed to work.

However I recently bought an external Western Digital 2 TB easystore plug and play USB drive. If I leave this new external HD plugged into my PC when I shut down, then the next time I turn on the PC, the PC locks up at boot-up on the HP splash screen and the PC becomes completely unresponsive. The only way I can boot up my PC is to first get down on my hands and knees under my desk, unplug the drive from the USB port, boot up the PC, and only then once Windows 7 is up and running, get back down under the desk again to plug the drive back into the USB port. That’s not exactly what I had in mind when I bought a “plug and play” drive.

So I sought help trying to get my PC to boot up with the drive already plugged in to a USB port. First I went to a local decades old BBS where they suggested I try updating the BIOS on my PC or reformatting the new HD with a different file system. That seemed a bit risky. Then I tried an HP forum, a Western Digital forum and finally I found how to email Western Digital tech support.

Well, yesterday afternoon I received an email from WD tech support:

In this case I recommend you to safely remove the WD drive before switching off the computer and plug it back once it’s done booting up as not doing that might corrupt the drive. So to avoid future data loss I highly recommend you to safely remove the WD drive.

I’m an old guy and my memory is getting a bit spotty these days, so I don’t think I could ever get used to remembering to safely remove the WD external drive every single time I shut down my PC. So I packed up the WD drive in it’s box, grabbed the purchase receipt and was going to take it back to Best Buy. That's when I read this on the receipt:

15-day return period

I looked at the date on the receipt and counted on my fingers: It turns out I’ve been trying to get this drive to work the way I expected it to work for the last 17 days. Argh!

I called Best Buy customer service where I was told that the general manager of the Best Buy store “might” accept it for return if I bring it in to the store today.

So, tell me: have I for all these years been laboring under under a delusion that it’s OK to leave an external USB HD plugged into a PC day after day and year after year? If so, then how come that trusty old workhorse (or should I say workBuffalo) external hard drive from a decade ago is still plugging along?

 

[Eximo]

Couple of things:

1) USB bugs. Several early Intel chipsets that natively support USB 3.0 from the PCH have a bug where they won't boot with a USB 3.0 device plugged in, or more commonly would not come out of hibernation. Windows 8.1 and up use Hybrid sleep for 'Shutdown'. Easy enough to test for, RESTART your computer and see if it does the same thing. If not, that is likely why they were suggesting a BIOS update, it could fix that problem.

2) Try a different USB port. If your board is old enough you might have some 2.0 ports, they should not have the above bug.

3) Enter the BIOS and check the boot order. If USB is a selected option, remove it or make sure it is last in the order. They system might just be halting on not finding a bootable partition.


Depending on what you are storing on this external drive, leaving it plugged in will basically put wear and tear on the internal power components. Unless the drive is constantly used it will spin down and only turn on when you try to get something off of it. Windows will do some disk management tasks to it when idle as well, but those will be infrequent.

An alternative would be to install a 2TB internal drive, should be slightly cheaper if you do it yourself, and much more expensive if you have Best Buy do it (but they can)

 

[RolandJS]

I might have missed it, is this ext HD used for backups? If so, remember that if ever a virus, malware, ransom-ware, gets into the computer, internal and external HDs which are attached during "attack times" will be affected (or is it effected?).

 

[Eximo]

I might have missed it, is this ext HD used for backups? If so, remember that if ever a virus, malware, ransom-ware, gets into the computer, internal and external HDs which are attached during "attack times" will be affected (or is it effected?).

That would also be true any time the drive is used, so kind of doesn't matter. Backups should be three copies of the data to make sure there is redundancy, and you don't want to backup to all devices at the same time. Less convenient to do them on a schedule, but a problem with one could take out all three.

As for effected vs affected, it depends on which dictionary you proscribe to. This is likely to end up as one of those words that gets colloquially used to the point of official definition change. In this case affected is more appropriate as there are few uses of effect in the past tense. (Though you are describing a potential future state) Effect and effective are the more common uses of that word. (Short answer, English sucks, don't think about it, people will know what you mean)

 

[RolandJS]

"That would also be true any time the drive is used, so kind of doesn't matter..." True enough, however, the less time an external HD is attached, the less chance of it getting "freshly hit". And, if anything bad resides on the internal HD - the external could get hit "thataway".