rudolph@intelisc.UUCP (David Rudolph) (07/24/88)
A question on hard disks: is it a big advantage to have a disk that auto-parks on power failures or on powerdown? I have heard many good things about Cirrus drives, but the one reason I am hesitating to buy one is that I gather from talking to their people that to you have to explicitly run their program or run 'shutdown' to park the heads. Is this likely to cause major problems if I have a power failure? -- David Rudolph CSnet: rudolph%isc.intel.com
Mark_Peter_Cookson@cup.portal.com (07/24/88)
Most drives put the head over a special section of the disk when not in use for like half a sec. Then if anything does go wrong nothing drastic will happen. I would not worry about it. My drive has lived through many a power failure and it is only a lowly Photon 20. Mark Cookson
pkahn@meridian.ads.com (Phil Kahn) (07/26/88)
In article <321@intelisc.UUCP> rudolph%isc.intel.com (David Rudolph) writes: >A question on hard disks: is it a big advantage to have a disk that >auto-parks on power failures or on powerdown? I have heard many good things >about Cirrus drives, but the one reason I am hesitating to buy one is that I >gather from talking to their people that to you have to explicitly run their >program or run 'shutdown' to park the heads. Is this likely to cause major >problems if I have a power failure? > I strongly do not suggest buying any hard drive without auto-park. Parking retracts the disk read head from the disk surface (and sometimes parking locks the head in place). When the head isn't parked, it can damage the disk surface. "Is this likely?" Well, probably not likely, but possible which is enough to scare me off. Can you say head crash or damaged media? phil...