Seagate lag problems

[Rick Claude]

I saw where a gentleman stated that the external hard drive should be only used as needed and unplugged. I wanted to use the 1tb drive to record data video/pictures from a security camera so it doesn't bog down the PC. Guess that is not an option?? Help confirm that please?

 

[RealBeast]

No, you can leave external drives running all the time -- the problem with them is if you have an unexpected power loss during a write you can lose all the data. A large Google study of hard drives a while back demonstrated that drives do very well when they run all the time.

I would just attach the external drive to the UPS that your computer is on, assuming that you use one, which I highly recommend.

 

[Sgt_Sykes]

It's likely that an external drive will spin down after a while anyway.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Rick Claude,

I will also agree with the other guys and say that will be no really reason for unplugging the drive when not in use(it just spins down and stays idle). In my opinion, an external drive will do the recording just fine and you don't really need to worry.
Also, vulnerable parts of the external hard drives are the ones related to connection: USB ports, cables, etc. So, the less unplugging(unsafe ejecting) you do, the smaller the chance of something going wrong.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD