a couple of concerns about my internal hard drives

I've got a couple of internal hard drives (3.5 HDD 7200 mostly) which were bought a few years ago and none of them have any backup solutions. However, none of them contains any very important information.

1.Some said that normally we should not unplug any internal hard drives because the SATA or power port will ruin and the hard drives will fail after several tens of times of plugging and unplugging, is it real????
(Sometimes I unplug some of the drives because I have more HDD drives than SATA and power cables available)

In that case, is it better to buy an external docking station for those hard drives which will probably have less damage to the ports when plugging and unplugging the drives?

2. I am thinking about buying new drives to create a backup copy of all my drives because they are getting old. Which solution is the best bet?

--- Internal hard drives and buying those external docking station to reduce damage to the SATA and power ports
--- External Desktop Hard drives which are always connected through USB which have no worries about the SATA and power ports
--- Any other solution?

You're like the only person ever I've seen worry about physical interface wear.

1) Why don't you just get another SATA cable and something like a molex to SATA power adapter? Then you could connect all of your drives, all of the time, and not have to dick around swapping crap 24/7. You will be introducing the same wear on the interface if you use a docking station and swap them out all of the time (how do you think the drive can be accessible through the dock?). I imagine 'several times of plugging/unplugging' would have to be in the hundreds for any noticeable amount of damage though.

2) How much data do you have to back up? Personally I'd just get a NAS or file server, then you can back up all of your junk onto that. You can also double blend your backup strategy into a cloud provider like Crashplan, although I would encrypt the information first if it's anything sensitive.

beers said:

You're like the only person ever I've seen worry about physical interface wear.

1) Why don't you just get another SATA cable and something like a molex to SATA power adapter? You will be introducing the same wear on the drives if you use a docking station and swap them out all of the time. I imagine 'several times of plugging/unplugging' would have to be in the hundreds for any noticeable amount of damage though.

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You misundestand me. I am NOT talking about the cables, I am talking about the connection. (Not connector)Haven't you heard about that SATA and power connection (Not the cables) would ruin after 40-50 plugging and unplugging? I have been hearing about that for quite some time.

I don't think it's easy to repair the connection port on the internal drives once it is damaged

kenny1999 said:

You misundestand me.

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That's because your usage pattern doesn't make any sense.

kenny1999 said:

I am NOT talking about the cables

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I'm not either, but I mentioned it since you said you didn't have enough. If you just got another cable and power connector you could just keep them hooked up all of the time, avoiding this stupid self induced 'problem'.

kenny1999 said:

I am talking about the connection. (Not connector)

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If you're not talking about the cables, and not talking about the connector, what are you talking about? I was referring to the physical connector on the drive.

kenny1999 said:

I have been hearing about that for quite some time.

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From where, specifically? I'm sure there's some degree of truth to it but you're likely over-sensationalizing it.

He's talking about the actual sata power and sata data connectors on the drive itself. And yes you are overthinking this too much. Unless you are physically abusing the connectors on the drive you'll be fine. If you have that many drives then I would assume these are small drives so you would just need to get bigger capacity drives. If your motherboard is within a couple years old it should be able to handle 2+ terabyte drives. What motherboard do you have?

johnb35 said:

He's talking about the actual sata power and sata data connectors on the drive itself. And yes you are overthinking this too much. Unless you are physically abusing the connectors on the drive you'll be fine. If you have that many drives then I would assume these are small drives so you would just need to get bigger capacity drives. If your motherboard is within a couple years old it should be able to handle 2+ terabyte drives. What motherboard do you have?

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The motherboard and the PSU do not provide enough SATA and power cables, but I am having too much internal HDDs. Continue buying internal HDD and external docking or replacing everything with external desktop drives? What do you recommend

johnb35 said:

He's talking about the actual sata power and sata data connectors on the drive itself.

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That is also what I was referring to.

kenny1999 said:

The motherboard and the PSU do not provide enough SATA and power cables, but I am having too much internal HDDs. Continue buying internal HDD and external docking or replacing everything with external desktop drives? What do you recommend

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Additional SATA cables and a molex -> SATA power adapter are much cheaper.

kenny1999 said:

Some said that normally we should not unplug any internal hard drives because the SATA or power port will ruin and the hard drives will fail after several tens of times of plugging and unplugging,
would ruin after 40-50 plugging and unplugging? I have been hearing about that for quite some time.

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Whoever is telling you this is a moron.

Unless you physically bend and snap the connector, it's not going to just "wear out" from plugging and unplugging a cable from the HDD.