Does an External Harddrive Slow Your Computer?

jac68984jac68984
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have connected a WD external HD to my 27 in i5 iMac and it seems to have caused the system to slow down. I see the spinning ball more frequently when it's connected it seems. Is this normal. I would like to have the HD connected all the time so that backups can happen frequently and automatically, but I don't really want to do so if it will negatively affect my system. Thanks for the input.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    Sometimes drives go to sleep when not being used and when you try to access a file dialog or Disk Utility, it tries to wake it up but it hangs up while it mounts so you get the beachball.



    I'd personally leave it off and control your backups yourself. Just turn the drive on once a week and have it do its backups and shut it off again.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    It SHOULDN'T slow it down except when it needs to access it.



    I have a couple ext HDDs (FW and USB) connected to my C2D iMac and don't notice any slowdown ... just a pause when I access those disks, as they're usually asleep.
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