Today’s Question: I’ve had the idea that I need to keep external drives connected to my laptop all the time when I’m at home. But do I? Similarly, do I need my backup drive connected all the time or only at those times when Carbon Copy Cloner is scheduled to back up?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Out of an abundance of caution, I prefer not to keep external hard drives connected to the computer unless they are needed.
More Detail: While it is perfectly reasonable to keep external hard drives connected to your computer at all times, so you have access to the data on those drives at any time, I prefer to only keep external hard drives connected when they are actually needed.
Admittedly, this is a habit born out of what some may consider an extreme abundance of caution. Part of the concern, for example, is that if you keep all hard drives connected at all times and there is a severe power surge or lightning strike, you may have a situation where all drives are damaged at the same time and you don’t have a backup to recover from. This is obviously not a highly likely event.
In general, it is safe to keep hard drives connected to the computer at all times. I just prefer to take a more cautious approach and only connect the drives I need when they are needed. That could include connecting drives in time for a scheduled backup, or connecting drives all day long when you’ll be working with your photos, for example.
Keep in mind, by the way, that with Lightroom Classic you don’t need to have your source photos available to be able to review and update metadata, based on having built previews of your photos. If you build Smart Previews you can even work in the Develop module when the source photos are unavailable due to a hard drive being disconnected.
To be sure, this isn’t an issue I would stress about. To me it is just a matter of trying to maintain the best habits to minimize the risk of data loss. Therefore, I only connect drives when I need them. For example, I never connect all backup drives and the source drive at the same time, instead backing up to a single drive without other backup drives connected during that backup.
