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From: kleonard@gvlv3.gvl.unisys.com (Ken Leonard)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Tell me the meaning of hard disk parameters!
Message-ID: <989@gvlv2.GVL.Unisys.COM>
Date: 8 Oct 90 14:41:11 GMT
References: <1070@bilver.UUCP>
Sender: news@gvlv2.GVL.Unisys.COM
Reply-To: kleonard@gvlv3.UUCP (Ken Leonard)
Organization: Unisys Defense Systems, NISD, Great Valley Laboratory
Lines: 33

In article <1070@bilver.UUCP> alex@bilver.UUCP (Alex Matulich) writes:
* I just bought a slightly used machine that came with a Conner CP-3104
* 100-megabyte hard disk.  Since it had been jostled around a bit in
* transport, I decided to do a low-level reformat of the hard disk.  The
* computer, an Aries 386, has a ROM utility that does this.
* 
* I was asked for the following parameters:
* 
* Number of Cylinders     776
* Number of Heads           8
* Sectors per Track        33
* W-pcom present          Yes
* W-pcom cylinder           0
* Landing Zone              0
* 
* The second column above were the default values for these parameters.
* I know what the first 3 and last one are, but what on earth is a
* W-pcom?  Why is it on track zero?
--
This does seem a bit weird, but may just be _your_ BIOS way of indicating
that write-precompensation is actually _not_ used.
--
* Furthermore, I thought the "Landing Zone" was the track the heads land
* on at power-up.  Should it be track 0?  I thought it would be better if
* they landed on a track that is likely to never be used, like 776.
--
I hope you mean "... land on at power-_down_."  A zero for this parameter
usually means "Don't try to park the heads from BIOS, because the drive
parks them when _it_ detects power-down."
--
-------------------
regardz,
Ken