Are firewire external drives plug N play?

[maurice]

More specifically: can i pull the plug off my WD Passport Studio external drive (or press CMD E to eject it) and ignore the alert that appears warning that doing so may erase some data?

If so, is that true also for a USB2 connection? (that WD drive has both connectors)

Intel mini running Snow leopard

[mooblie]

I would use "Eject" first (ctrl-click icon: Pop up menu: "Eject"), on FW or USB, and wait until the icon disappears off the desktop. Are you in a great hurry?
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[Y-Guy]

Always try to eject all drives (FW/USB/TB) first, it's safer as it won't eject until it's done writing data to the drive, thus giving you more assurance you won't have data problems. Even windows finally came out with an eject option.
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[maurice]

Y-Gui, you are the second person to advise ejecting an external drive before unplugging it. I guess you are right, but I don't know where I saw the words "hot plugging" and "hot swappable" and "plug n play"...

Actually, while I work on my Mini I occasionally see an alert scolding me for disconnecting a drive without properly ejecting it first, although I did nothing of the sort: (it must have been a bad contact in the connecting cable or in the USB powered hub)

Strange things can happen: I bought recently a WD ext.drive FW/USB2. I chose it as the startup volume (in System Preferences) Yet Äbout This Mac rightly named my internal HD as the startup disk... so it seems that alerts could sometimes be misleading.

[Y-Guy]

Apple does suggest/tell you to eject your drives. Of course it's up to you, but you'll always get that warning and you won't get any sympathy when you find data has been corrupted

I have my HD's do it on their own occasionally, though usually either a cable was loose or the drive was having issues. If it does that it's a sign to me to run the Disk Utility.

From WikiPedia, "Hot swapping and hot plugging are terms used to describe the functions of replacing computer system components without shutting down the system." "In computing, plug and play is a term used to describe the characteristic of a computer bus, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration, or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts."

Regardless I always shut down my drive before I plug/unplug them just to be safe.
_________________
iMac 24" 2.4 GHz 4GB | Logitech S530 | Z-2300 speakers | NewerTech Guardian MAXimus RAID
MacMini HTPC 2.26 GHz 2GB | Panasonic Plasma TV | Logitech diNovo Edge | Mercury Elite-AL Pro 800
AppleTV1 unhacked | Panasonic LCD

[maurice]

thank you,Y-Guy. I'll remember your advice.