Must An External Drive Remain Plugged In?

[fb0252]

I'm storing my necessary office files on a WD My Book External Hard Drive. Would like to know whether unplugging the External Drive will cause me to lose the files. If I can keep the drive unplugged, can it remain unplugged indefinitely and still hold its data?

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

The data stays whether or not the unit has power. It's no different then if the power goes out at your home, and your PC with it's internal hard drive doesn't have power.

I don't know about "indefinitely", but for any reasonable amount of time, yes it can stay off and still work when plugged back in.

 

[Muse]

I only use my external 500 GB HD occasionally for backup (i.e. when writing data to it). The rest of the time I have it switched off.