external hard drive question and hard drive

jasonhan416

Honorable
Jan 25, 2014
12
0
10,510
So I have hgst touro 4tb external hard drive and I usually leave it plugged in on usb port and the power port. My friend said I'm not allowed to do that and my other friend said external hard drive with power adapter on it meant to kept on 24/7.. I'm worried which one is more accurate.

Another thing I want to ask is getting a new internal harddrive. My previous thread I posted about my internal.. yeah its broken. My friend said there is one that meant to spin the disk 24/7 and some it's not. How am I suppose to know which one is which.. ? And some ppl install something on your computer to get internal working or something?? I thought you just plug it in on your sata cable and it just works itself..
 

Kromletch

Honorable
May 12, 2012
104
0
10,710
You can leave it plugged in and on if you like. If its not in use then why keep it on? When anything is used, it typically shortens its life. It would be wise to turn off if you are not using it frequently.

If your Hard drive is physically damaged there is no software that is going to fix it to my knowledge. Best case scenario is data recovery when it comes to HDD's.