Do you need to keep your hard drive plugged in all the time

Geraldeen1520 wrote:

The LaCie Apple hard drive I just purchased - should keep plugged in or not - I just noticed a red light flashing I have not noticed before

thank I

An external drive does not need to be plugged in all the time.

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

ex. For my Time Machine Backup. I plug the drive in once a week.

If you want Time Machine to make backups every hour then its drive should be turned on and connected whenever the Mac is on. This lets TM create versions of documents so you can go back to a given date and recover that particular version of the document.

If you don't have a desktop Mac then connecting the drive lest frequently is reasonable.