Really quick question

[mr_banana_pants]

As you may know from previous threads I had some issues recovering data from a corupt external hard drive.

 

Well I'm finally well under way with the recovery thanks to you guys.

 

My question is, (to lessen the chances of messing things up again) do I switch my external HD off before or after I shut down my laptop?

 

Thanks

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Most definitely after you have shut the laptop down Banana.

[Jack Hackett]

It makes no difference

[Guest Wolfeymole]

So your making a massive file transfer to the external drive and it's cooking away on the task bar but you forget and shut the external drive down.

Are you telling me Jack that all will be rosy?

[Jack Hackett]

You are talking about human error now Wolfey, your scenario would also be the same if you forget and shut down the laptop during a large file transfer.

 

With no tasks being performed to or from the ext drive it makes NO difference if you shut the PC down 1st or the ext drive

[Tootech]

Assuming your external drive is a USB device, use the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in your right hand tray to stop the disk before removing it or shutting the pc down.

 

[ATTACH]177[/ATTACH]

 

There is plenty of debate as to whether or not is it needed, however Vista retains the feature so it obviously has a use.

 

I have lost data by not using it, but not corrupted a disk.

 

It takes 5 seconds, a worthwhile precaution I would say.

Edited September 27, 2009 by Tootech

[Guest Wolfeymole]

I have an Integral external casing containing an IDE drive hooked up via USB and the light on the front constantly flickers because there is some kind of miniscule data transfer even though I'm sending nothing to it right now.

 

I still maintain what I said earlier.

[Tootech]

And the debate continues.....:)

[Guest Wolfeymole]

It sure does Tootech ;)

[Dalo Harkin]

Sorry guys - but I am with Wolfey here -

if you use the drive alot and leave it plugged in permanently then definately after as Wolfey says - if you just transfer data and then unplug it then just do that.

If its transferring data and then you unplug all sorts of nasty things can happen :eek: