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From: psfales@ihlpl.UUCP (Peter Fales)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: Hard Disk for PC-6300
Message-ID: <1504@ihlpl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Nov-86 09:45:48 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlpl.1504
Posted: Wed Nov 19 09:45:48 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Nov-86 23:10:43 EST
References: <8519PAX@PSUVMA> <119@hqda-ai.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 23

> 	The heads should be moved to the landing area
> before powering down the drive.  On cheap drives, you
> must run a program to do this.  More expensive drives do
> this automatically. 
> 
> 	If you opt for a drive without this feature, and
> forget to run the parking program before shutting down,
> you *WILL* damage your drive.  It may take several
> occurrances before you start losing files, but every
> shutdown without prior parking will decrease the
> reliability of your drive.

This is news to me, and if drives with this (mis)feature are commonly in
use it is probably something that should be more widely known.  Most 
personal computers I am familiar with have a utility for parking the
disk heads, but the documentation generally indicates that the heads
only need to be parked if the computer is going to be moved.

Does anyone have more information on what drives do and do not require 
explicit parking before shutdown?

Pete Fales
ihnp4!ihlpl!psfales