So I've ran out of internal SATA ports and power ports, but plenty of spare USB ports, is it bad if i just use external drives permanently connected to USB and treat them as storage drive, they are just spinners not SSD ?
Any issues long term? What if programs and games are installed to it?
I have a external seagate 5TB drive connected to my desktop semi-permanently and acting as a backup drive for 2+ years now. It just sits idle when it's not in use, and the disk only spins up when I access it, which is probably around 3-4 times a day only.
If you are using a desktop, you can just add a PCIe SATA card / RAID controller to add more SATA ports, as long as you have a free PCIE slot available.
3.5" ?
Is It Bad to Leave Portable HDD Connected Long Term?
Almosy certainly it is not ideal, ie. It would wear out more quickly.
However, unless the hard drive has some really important stuff on it which isn't backed up elswhere, then I wouldn't/don't worry about it. By the time it eventually breaks, that same GB of HDD will likely be obsolete and very little to replace (and you will probably upgrade then anyway :)
I have kept hard drives plugged in all the time with several different devices (playstation, tv, xbox, media player) and I have only had 1 of my approx 10 different hard drives fail on me. I think it was from copying over approx 1gb of movies over onto friends computer which had viruses on it. My hard drive ended up corrupted after that and replaced under warranty.
If you have important files on the hard drive which aren't backed up somewhere (even online might be ok) … well, then you are very foolish. Stuff breaks sometimes, it will most likely lessen its life somewhat leaving drive plugged jn all the time. Make sure anything extremely important is saved in more than 1 location (either on another drive or online jn cloud), just in case storagw devicw breaks or is lost/stolen.
I think that leaving it permanently connected is much safer than moving it around connecting and disconnecting all the time.
I agree, it's much better than connecting and disconnecting all the time. Also, the drives need to be connected every so often otherwise they stop working.
Not sure why I was downvoted.
Moving parts can seize up if not used regularly enough, especially platter heads (we were taught this in IT).
Having said that, it doesn't mean it will happen to every single drive.
Other factors are storage conditions, dropping/bumping the drive etc.
I've just thrown out three portable hard drives that were barely used and had been sitting idle for 2-3 years.
Your BIOS might check the external drives during boot which will slow down the start-up process. My laptop does that even after I removed all USB devices from the boot sequence. It does not start booting from the fast SSD until all attached USB HDDs have spun up, slowly.
Your BIOS might check the external drives during boot which will slow down the start-up process.
Check your bios settings, unless you're working with a really old motherboard, this shouldn't be the case.
Portable 2.5" drive platters are not as hardy as plug-in powered 3.5" drives. The 3.5" drives are also cheaper for the same storage amount. So why not use a 3.5" drive?
Portable 2.5" drive platters are not as hardy as plug-in powered 3.5" drives.
internal hdd and portable hdd are the same. the only difference is the casing and interface.
he's comparing 2.5" vs 3.5" hdd , nothing to do with internal/external
external 2.5" marketed as 'portable' drive
whereas external 3.5" usually marketed as 'desktop' expansion drive (requiring wall power)
the reply was to hdd platters on portable 2.5" not being as hardy as plug-in 3.5".
Probably time to upgrade to some sort of NAS.
I run a RPI media server that boots osmc off an external 2tb 2.5" USB drive, is constantly running, downloading and streaming. Has been going since early 2015.
When I set it up, that portable HDD was second hand, and a scan in linux identified some bad blocks and quarantined them (probably caused by it being bumped around and what not). Since hooking up to the pi permanently, its worked perfectly.
Thanks for this comment.
I’ve been doing the same but with a powered 3.5, wondered if 2.5 USB powered would be ok.
No issues at all with that.
I have a WD 2Tb portable, dunno the model, it's older but still usb3, it refuses to spin down, only way I can do it is with HD-Idle under linux
Only thing I can think of is ransomware having access to it if you ever get infected, your chosen AV doesn't save you and it's been awhile since your last backup/s.
If it's not your main drive, it will mostly be idle.