[comp.sys.amiga] HD Auto Parking

dwl10@uts.amdahl.com (Dave Lowrey) (01/04/90)

The other night, I decided to re-partition my hard drive. I have
an A2090A controller with a Rodime (43M?) ST506 drive.

After an hour or so of messing around, I finally figured out i had to
prep the drive in order to change the size of the first partition.

The PREP program asked me an interesting question, "Do you want to
automatically park the heads after 3 seconds?" (or something to that
effect). Living in the land of thunderstorms, and frequent power outages,
I figured this may be a good idea, so I answered Y(es). It then asked
me which cylinder to park it over.

Here is my question....which cylinder is "best"? The default, as suggested
by the PREP program, was the last cylinder. At first, this seemed logical,
as most of the data I would be accessing will be in the "upper half" of
the cylinders.

However, someone has told me that most of the lubricant for the heads lie
inside of track 0 (wouldn't centrifigal force cause the lubricant to
spread toward the outside oof the platters?).

Does anyone have any idea on the "best" place to park my heads?

Thanks!
-- 
"What is another word  |  Dave Lowrey    | [The opinions expressed MAY be
 for 'Thesaurus'?"     |  Amdahl Corp.   | those of the author and are not
                       |  Houston, Texas | necessarily those of his
   Steven Wright       |  amdahl!dwl10   | employer]   (`nuff said!)