Silly question about my hard drive.

[Arnold1972]

Hello forum.
Ive recently purchase an external hard drive for my laptop and i have performed two full system back ups to this drive.
The query that i have is do i need to have the external hard drive connected to the laptop continuously.?
Would i be able to unplug the hard drive and free up a USB port and use the hard drive only when i need it or does it seriously need to be connected all the time..?
Many Thanks.

 

[clifford_cooley]

Unless you have the PC set to do scheduled backups, it would be safe to unplug the drive till you wish to manually backup or restore.