SAC.HQSAC-ACMI@e.isi.edu (02/23/87)
I have a pair of AT style 5 1/4 inch disks connected to an 8 inch controller. They work fine but i am not sure of one thing. I can set HEAD LOAD for when the drive is selected or when the door is closed. Since the motor is set to come on when the drive is selected, which of the above is best for HEAD LOAD? The drives do make a nice "clank" sound when selected now (I have HL set for when selected). Will this cause the diskettes to wear faster then the other method? Thanks Marc Frederick
boykin@custom.UUCP (02/24/87)
In article <4610@brl-adm.ARPA>, SAC.HQSAC-ACMI@e.isi.edu writes: > I have a pair of AT style 5 1/4 inch disks connected to an 8 inch > controller. They work fine but i am not sure of one thing. I > can set HEAD LOAD for when the drive is selected or when the door > is closed. Since the motor is set to come on when the drive is > selected, which of the above is best for HEAD LOAD? Loading the head(s) when the door is closed (i.e. most of the time) will cause the diskettes to wear out faster. Hence, you want to load the heads only when the drive is actually going to be used. The advantage of keeping the heads loaded is access time; you don't have to wait for the heads to come in contact with the disk. Wearing out the disk doesn't make this a big advantage, especially when most controllers (via hardware or software) allow you to keep the heads loaded for some number of seconds after the last access. Doing this means that the heads will be in contact with the disk ("loaded") whenever you're doing repeated disk accesses (like a disk copy). -- Joe Boykin Custom Software Systems ...{necntc, frog}!custom!boykin