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From: eric@cti.UUCP (Eric Black)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Intro and Leaving Amiga On (was : Amiga Modems)
Message-ID: <367@cti.cti.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Sep-86 15:27:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: cti.367
Posted: Tue Sep 30 15:27:26 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Oct-86 06:21:17 EDT
References: <2222@gitpyr.UUCP> <170@sas.UUCP> <2254@gitpyr.UUCP> <6@ritcv.UUCP> <179@sas.UUCP>
Reply-To: eric@cti.UUCP (Eric Black)
Distribution: net.micro.amiga
Organization: Cornerstone Technology, Inc.
Lines: 31
Keywords: Disk clicking

In article <179@sas.UUCP> walker@sas.UUCP (Doug Walker) writes:
>What about the constant clicking of an empty Amiga drive?  This can't be
>good for the drive, can it?  And if you leave a dis IN the drive, it seems
>to me that that would be worse. . .

The folks in Los Gatos say that it should be able to click for years.
I dunno.  Even so, if you put a disk in the drive, how can it be
worse, since the drive is NOT spinning except when accessed (and for
a short period thereafter)?  When ADos notices that the disk has
gone away (via the DSKCHG signal from the drive), it starts looking
for one (oh, if only the drives had a "I just got a disk" signal as
well as the "I just lost my disk"...).  When it discovers a disk
in the drive, it verifies the file system structure (a simplified
version of the kind of thing "fsck" does for UN*X), and assumes that
the disk is still there until it goes away.

If your power is flakey, as mine is during the rainy season, you may
not want to have a real disk in the drive when power goes into
yo-yo mode.  Yes, I know you should be able to power down the computer
(and power it up) with disks in the drives and not mung the bits
thereon, but I've never ever trusted my important bits to that belief.
Put a scratch (NOT a scratched) disk in the drive when you go to
bed (or work), and it will keep the drives from clicking.

Soon I'll be thinking seriously about getting an UPS...  especially when
I have a hard disk on my system!


-- 
Eric Black   "Garbage In, Gospel Out"
UUCP:        {sun,pyramid,hplabs,amdcad}!cti!eric