Should Time Machine drive be connected all the time?

I have just bought a Western Digital hard drive, connected it to our imac via Firewire 800, and started the initial Time Machine backup. As the iMac only has one firewire port that I also use for connecting other devices such as my DV cancorder or my Edirol audio interface, I am wondering what happens with Time Machine when it's hard drive is not connected, which will be when ever I am using the firewire port for other things? Time machine is defaulted to back up every hour which it won't be able to do if it is not connected.
Will Time Machine just pick up and do a back up when it is reconnected?
Or, would it be better to use one of the USB ports, even though this is slower, and leave the hard drive connected all the time.

12frets56 wrote:
Or, would it be better to use one of the USB ports, even though this is slower, and leave the hard drive connected all the time.
This might be better, especially after your initial full backup, just so you don't have to be fooling with the plugs all the time, and perhaps forgetting to re-connect. If your incremental backups aren't large, the speed difference probably won't be significant.

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