External hard drive help

Carol if you have a copy on the external unless you specifically delete anything form it it will saty there.

Also a good thing to do is this Imaging with free Macrium it is good for making a complete system image and you can make the images on a regular or ad hoc basis.
From these you can reinstall all your gear

Carole. If you save a picture to your main computer operating system, which is Windows 7, it would be saved to a folder that you would normally nominate. If you have actually put a copy of that picture on your external drive, then it will remain there even if you delete that picture from your main drive.

No copy of that picture would be saved to your external drive, unless you actually do so. If you wish to have a back up copy of that picture, on the external drive, you would have to save it there. Normally you would save pictures to your main drive & then copy & paste them across to your external drive. If you have not been doing that then there will not be a copy on the external drive.

As ICIT2LOL has suggested you should have a look at Macrium Reflect for doing images of your main system drive. Doing a regular image protects your data & pictures etc., from being lost in the event of a major hardware failure. If you do an image say once a week, then a major failure will at worst only be a week out of date.

If you decide to use Macrium, we can assist you in getting that set up.

Carol it really does no harm to keep the drive plugged in all the time - the only thing is if the machine suffered a catastrophic hit from a surge or suchlike then it is possible for the damage to extend to the drive. Now that is highly unlikely but possible.

Now it is not essential to keep the drive plugged in at all times I don't know who is telling you that unless you are using the drive as a back up ie that imaging stuff I told you about it will not do any harm to disconnect it. You can also have as many drives as you like hooked up. It is really common sense and your choice to.:)

Now the pics no unless you go directly to where that pic is stored ie the internal or external drive and delete it then it will stay on the internal or external drive ir totally depends on which drive you pick to work on. So for example if you didn't want the pic on that external drive you have to go to Start > Computer > then pick the external drive - open it - find the pic and then delete it.

There are instances for example if one has more than one drive on a computer and if you were to want to clean the drive then you may pick the wrong drive and then you would lose the data (pics, docs etc)

Don't worry about asking questions the only silly question is the one you do not ask

We've all heard the old adage that "there is an exception to (almost) every rule."
One exception to much of what I've read here is a program that "Sync's" an external drive with the main drive, so they both have identical files. So if you change or delete a file on the main drive, that is reflected on the external drive. However that could wind up being a recipe for disaster, that's why I've never used such a program.

I believe 110% in doing both data and entire C: drive backups at least weekly, to an external hard drive, and NOT to a cloud. If something bad can happen to a computer, eventually it will, somewhere, some day to someones computer.
I've been in the computer and electronics repair business since 1964, and I've seen some disastrous damage to electronics by lightning.... even to devices that were not even plugged in at the time. I saw one case, where lightning jumped three feet across a kitchen counter and blew up a radio, before it jumped on to the kitchen sink faucet. The radio was not even plugged in.

I strongly agree, with the statement that if a computer is damaged by a surge or a voltage spike everything that's connected to that computer can be damaged as well. I had a very weird thing happen to me once, where my PC Power Supply went berserk and put out high voltage on both the 5v and 12v lines.
Almost everything in that computer was "Roached" (burned up)

So in short, I'm very much in favor of only connecting external storage devices when they are needed to make backups, and then for safely, disconnect them. That's only a suggestion, but one that's based on many years of experience. I feel that I'd be remiss if I did not pass that advise along. I'd rather be SAFE than SORRY.

Cheers Mates!
TechnoMage

Are you using one of those constant backup via sync programs? I'm wanting to understand what is happening to both internal and external HDs.

Whoever told you that is wrong.

Copy, Paste, Verify............ Copy, Paste, Verify :)

And I totally agree with TechnoMage 100% only hookup the external when you need to use it.

AddRAM said:

...Copy, Paste, Verify............ Copy, Paste, Verify :)
And I totally agree with TechnoMage 100% only hookup the external when you need to use it.

+1 to both AddRAM and TechnoMage; I too trust copy and verify from time to time; and my ext HDs are only connected during backup/restore operations.

Pretty well reflecting what I said Carol I missed that you may be using some sort of sync software and really you only need to do what AddRam and the others and myself have said just use a normal backup system and the Macrium I ref'd before is as good as any and it will image the whole system not just pics.