Should I eject external drives when I shut down my Mac?

Hello to all,
This might be a very elementary question to some, but I trust I will be given the proper answer. I have been using my Mac for nearly a year and I have not been ejecting my external drive/s once a day's work is over. I use the drop down menu to either put the Mac to sleep or shut it down. I allow the power to be on for the multi-socket spike from which my Mac and my drives get their power. Is this right or wrong? Any guidance in this matter will be appreciated.

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, I never sleep desktop machines or their HDs, only their displays, and run 24/7, but do power down ext HDs and printers, since they're seldom used.
Hello and thanks baltwo. Sorry for this apparent delay in responding to your reply, reason being I did not have much time to sit on my Mac on account of the Festival of Peace being conducted here in Hyderabad where I stay. Am having a blessed time here attending the meetings.
Your reply has been worded precisley and I trust you are saying this:
You do not shut down or put your Mac to sleep, but put the display to sleep; and that you switch of the power to your ext drives and printers. Am I right?
I have with me a Buffalo thunderbolt [1 TB], a 2 TB, LaCie [2 TB] and 2 Seagate [2 TB] external drives. I was in the habit of having these drives mounted even though when I had no need of all of them. The Apple technician who had come to remove the RAM [see above] informed me that it was not a good thing to have all the drives connected at the same time. Since then I am trying to keep only those drives for which I had need mounted.
The thunderbolt has no external power supply and hence, if I have no need of its services, I have to eject it and then unplug it from the back of the Mac. The LaCie has a power switch conveniently located on the drive itself and ejecting it and unpowering it should be easy. For the Seagate drives, after ejecting them, I need to remove the power adapters from the power spike. At the end of the day, when one is tired, all these different processes may be cumbersome to me, but I would not mind adopting it if I could be instructed as to how this method of yours scores over the other method in which one shuts down the computer. My next thanks is awaiting you!
Cheers and have agreat day.

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