WD Community

WD My Book 6TB, can i leave it plugged in?

I have a My Book 6TB (with a power plug).

I would like it to behave like a internal hard drive.

Can i leave the ‘My Book’ plugged in when i shut down my PC(Windows) .

Would i need to safely eject the device before shutting down,
whilst leaving the USB and power plug connected for the next time i power the PC back on to continue to use the drive or once ejected do i need to unplug the device from the USB port and Power source once the PC is off?

I usually do it the other way around … ie. Shut the PC, then just simply unplug/remove the hard drive.

Haven’t had any issues doing it this way for the last 15 or more Years.

You can do whatever you want.

I’ve left everything connected and powered on … after shutting down the PC and then powering back on… no problems.

If you’re not gonna be using your computer for an extended time 24+ hours … then i power off.

In closing … my personal thought

I only plug in an external hard drive when i need to use it … when not using it, i unplug it.

I download everything to the internal hard drive 1st … then move it to external storage.

Also, keep a back up of everything

If you have a 6TB hard drive full of important data … then you should also have another 6TB hard drive with a backup of that data.

‘Expensive’ you may say … it’s not, if you look at what Data Recovery Services charge
to recover your data.

Data loss can happen at any time, it’s happened to me in the past … had no backups then. Learnt my lesson.

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