Unplugging back up hard drives.

[Derek]

I read on another forum about the ramsomware virus and people said that once that have downloaded data to their external hard drives they unplug them thus preventing the risk of getting the virus. I have done that and now I am wondering if I should unplug the Time Machine back up hard drive and plug it in for an hour a day to do the back ups required and then unplug.
Any thoughts on this?

 

[honestone]

The spreading of a virus to an external device depends on the virus itself, but it will cause no harm to leave your drives unplugged until you ned them. If you plug them in while using your machine, you'll just need to wait until the drive is recognized by the OS, which of course occurs once the drive/partitions appear on the desktop. I have one of my external drives unplugged most of the time, only plugging it in when I do my weekly disk drive cleanup/maintenance, and backups. That works well.