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From: dorourke@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (David M. O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: A Few Technical Questions
Keywords: help, mac, sofa
Message-ID: <4696@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 17 Oct 88 17:23:14 GMT
References: <940@uvm-gen.UUCP> <3f185fcb.129dc@blue.engin.umich.edu>
Reply-To: dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David M. O'Rourke)
Distribution: na
Organization: Cal Poly State University -- San Luis Obispo
Lines: 22

In article <3f185fcb.129dc@blue.engin.umich.edu> mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu (Dean Yu) writes:
>  What's happening here is that when you shut down, if you're not parking
>the heads, it's at least moving them closer to the boot blocks.  If you just
>restart, it leaves the heads where they wre when you restarted, so it has to
>seek all over the platters for the boot blocks.

  Two things.  By definition the Boot Blocks are locatated on track 1 (0?), so
I don't know too many HD's that have to "seek all over the platters" to find
track one.  I believe the reason that the HD's seek all over the platters when
you don't choose shut down is because the Mac's filing system maintains a
"shutdown" bit or something to indicate if the drive was closed out properly.
If this "shutdown" bit isn't set properly then the drive assumes that there
might have been some files left open, so it scans the disk looking for
inconsistancies in the file structure that it can rectify.  This if for when
the power goes out while your still in an application, ect...

  Or course I might be wrong :-)  Anyone from Apple care to clear this up??
-- 
David M. O'Rourke                                  dorourke@polyslo.calpoly.edu

"If it doesn't do Windows, then it's not a computer!!!"
Disclaimer: I don't represent the school.  All opinions are mine!