External Hard Drive Enclosure

[wirm]

Hi folks,

I bought a cheap hard drive enclosure and a 160 GB hard drive to put in it. Everything works find, but since I hardly use that drive, I tend to leave it unplugged.

I was wondering if anybody knows whether the external drive should be plugged in before the computer is powered on, or if it can be at any time.

I know enough not to randomly unplug the thing while the computer is on, but is it ok to plug it in at any time?

Thanks

 

[El Presidente]

I'm assuming that the drive connects to the computer via USB or Firewire. If this is the case, make sure you plug in the power cord before the USB or Firewire cord. It doesn't matter what the power state of the computer is. If your configuration isn't what is listed above, please provide some more detail. Hope this helps!

 

[Nodsu]

You can turn on the enclosure any time you like. USB devices are designed to be *****-proof and hot-pluggable. Unless the enclosure was built by someone very silly then it will work fine and will not break anything.