power off peripherals?

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I have the LaCie firewire (porsche) hard drive and a LaCie firewire CD/r drive. I was wondering... when I shut down my computer, do I need to power off these peripherals? Is there an advantage/disadvantage to doing this? I ask because the cd drive does not have an "off" button and the on/off button on the hard drive is rather inacessible.

what is the proper usage?
 
Nope, you don't NEED to power them off, except in the event of a rainstorm (just to make sure they don't get damaged).

As for the external hard drive, I would set up the energy saver to sleep my system after a period of inactivity. That way, the drive will be powered up, but sleeping and therefore using very little power. Since most firewire drives have crappy cooling characteristics, it would possibly prolong the life of the drive to sleep it when you're not using it.

I would avoid using the "Sleep hard drives when possible" option in the Energy Saver System Preference. My buddy's firewire hard drive acts strangely when this option is checked.
 
I contacted LaCie about this. This is what they told me:

"Our d2 drives will power themselves on and off with the computer.

Turning the power off on a CD burner is not so important. They just idle and do nothing. However, the Design by FA Porsche-cased hard drives will not spin down and sleep, so you should power them off when not in use."

Only my CD burner is d2, my hard drive which I will be using any time my computer is not sleeping or off is from the Design by FA Porsche line. This is very annoying and inconvenient to me. This type of usage was not explained on the website or in the product's manual. Does this seem like a well designed product?

I've also noticed that the Porsche HD is hot to the touch. Should I be concerned?
 
As long as you have some ventilation, the HD should be ok. Just don't keep it atop paper or plastic. Something like the coolpad is worth a few extra bucks to keep air circulating around and under it.
 
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