Why? powering up and down

[Paul David]

Why does Digi recommend starting your hard drives, then the 003, then the computer and the reverse for power down?

As an act of rebellion I broke all the rules and know what happened? Nothin. No problems all week turning on my 003 and hard drive only when I was using them and keeping my computer on the whole week, except for when it's in sleep mode. (another thing strictly forbidden by Digi)

However, I went to a lunch where I learned all about running logic pro and ableton live from a macbook pro for an upcoming tour and the guy who was putting on the clinic mentioned ways in which he keeps his computer crash resistant and one of the things he said was "I never plug anything in while the computer's powered on" Speaking of hard drives and audio interfaces. With this one statement he destroyed a whole weeks worth of my field testing and has me following strict start up and shut down procedures.

So my question is simply... Why? What does it hurt and how does it hurt it?

Thanks

[The Dougfather]

There is a risk, and it has happened of frying the firewire ports on the host machine. Sure we've all done it and got away with it but is it really worth it?

Cheers

[BRH]

Apparently you are not very old. All outboard gear connected to the computer used to have to powered up first so it was recognized.
Especially SCSI drives.
Not so today with FW drives.... but we still follow this rule.

[M.Brane]

Powering on/off a device that's connected to a powered host is probably the worst thing you can do. I hot-plug FW hard drives all the time, but I always power them up before connecting, and eject/unplug before powering down. The only exception to this I've seen are some cameras.

Of course powering everything on/off in sequence, and making connections with the power off is the safest method.

[Paul David]

Thanks... Good to know.