How long should I keep my external hard drive connected to my computer

"Why can't you keep it connected all the time? Most modern hard drives will put themselves into 'sleep' if they are not used often to reduce the power consumption and increase the life of the drive.

Modern hard drives are designed to sleep after a certain period of inactivity. This is to conserve energy and is also considered by some to increase the useful life of the drive by reducing wear. In standby mode, the hard drive is in a state of low energy consumption and its platters have ceased to sleep

Depending on the settings of the operating system, the hard drive would automatically go to sleep after a period of inactivity, and thus increasing the lifespan of the drive.

After all, the hard drive inside your computer stays plugged in the whole time, so why should an external one differ?"

"Depends on what you use it for.

I use mine for backup and file transfer, and therefore I only hook it up when I'm going to use it. After all, any disk attached to a computer is in some slight danger of having data corrupted or overwritten, and I don't consider anything normally online to be a satisfactory backup."

"Really it shouldn't matter, don't worry too much.

Perhaps use it for a while and determine if its spinning down when idle (either on it's own or becuase the OS does it), and then consider whether or not to leave it plugged in all the time. :)"
"Really it shouldn't matter, don't worry too much.

Perhaps use it for a while and determine if its spinning down when idle (either on it's own or becuase the OS does it), and then consider whether or not to leave it plugged in all the time. :)"

"I have been using my Seagate GoFlex 1 TB connected to PC past 2 years. I am a extreme user, and I shutdown my PC only twice a month, for cleaning purpose.

External HDD are no different than the internal one, and I think there is no harm leaving! it connected to PC for long, also if you are not using it, it automatically sleeps."