arritt@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (08/21/90)
Recently I bought a PC for one of the members of my research staff. His
sole use of this unit has turned out to be as a terminal emulator (not even
any uploads or downloads, just typing into the campus mainframe). Since
the single most trouble-prone and expensive component (in my experience)
is the hard drive, and the hard drive is almost totally unused,
would there be any advantage to disconnecting the power
to the hard drive? He could easily boot from a floppy which also contained
the emulation program, thereby saving wear and tear on the hard disk. We
would leave the hard drive in the system so it could be reconnected at a
later date if necessary.
Are there any problems with such a procedure? Specifically (1) will it
hurt the drive to sit a long time without moving; (2) will the
controller get confused (or worse) because there's no power going to
the hard drive; (3) any other known problems.
Thanks for whatever help you can give. Please e-mail your responses and
I will post if there is sufficient interest. (Sorry if this has been
covered before, but a quick search of available articles didn't turn
up anything.)
________________________________________________________________________
Raymond W. Arritt |
Assistant Professor |
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy |
Univ. of Kansas |
Lawrence, KS 66045 |
arritt@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu |
arritt@ukanvax.bitnet |