leaving external hard drive plugged in?

[400mangos]

do a lot of people on here do it? i have a 1TB external that i use for a backup, but its a pain to always have to plug it in and eject it. Can i just leave it plugged in? would there be any confusion on where to boot up from? or lower the life of the drive?

i read something on here about leaving an 8GB flash drive plugged in permanently, but not sure if i can do the same for a larger external.

thanks

 

[kevin2223]

In your System Preferences, you can select which drive to use as your startup disk. This eliminates some of the time it takes to boot up, and if you have OS X installed on the external, you can hold down the option key on startup to select it.

Most newer hard drives shut off or go into a lower power state when there isn't activity, so there shouldn't be any issues in that regard. All hard drives will die one day, so your best bet would be to have at least one back-up of the external. But otherwise, you can leave it plugged in and mounted within OS X.

 

[alust2013]

You can leave it plugged in, the computer knows where to boot from.

 

[400mangos]

thanks for the quick replies! plugged in it stays

 

[Badger^2]

Did some PC user tell you it was bad or you couldnt ?

I have 4 drives that stay plugged in and on 24/7 and have been for the last 5+ years. Zero problems.