hard drive head parking in linux
Hi, folks --
Does Linux automatically lift the heads of a hard drive off of the disk after some time of non-activity?
Does it also park the heads as a part of the shutdown process?
I understand that early PC hard drives had to have their heads parked when shut down, but that the later hard drives do this automatically. Under DOS with most of my older PCs, I've used a few small utilities that perform both of the above functions. One such utility lifts the heads after a period of inactivity (a TSR) after a predetermined number of minutes.
This is important to me, since I find it useful to preserve the old hard drives of PCs in my collection, which will also include some Linux machines...
Thank you for any knowledge on this matter!
--
Jerry... on a 486 DX2-50MHz with 8MB RAM in BasicLinux 1.7 and Midnight Commander at the lab of Classic Systems, Ltd.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [email protected]
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
Quoted 3 lines · Jerry James Haumberger
I understand that early PC hard drives had to have their heads parked when shut down,
A blast from the past. Yes, indeed, pre-IDE drives (two data cables) needed parking. Over the years I've had several of these monsters. I even installed a small Linux on one (it had to be small 'cause the HD was only 20mb :-). Did you know that the latest Slackware (8.1) still provides a stock kernel (xt.i) for such drives? Imagine that: a 2.4.18 kernel on an old Seagate MFM.
Quoted 2 lines
Jerry... on a 486 DX2-50MHz with 8MB RAM in BasicLinux 1.7 and Midnight Commander at the lab of Classic Systems, Ltd.
You gotta give credit to Jerry. He doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk. A close reading of his message header reveals that he is indeed using a minimalist mailer for this list.
Cheers,
Steven
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [email protected]
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
Quoted 6 lines · Jerry James Haumberger
Hi, folks --
Does Linux automatically lift the heads of a hard drive off of the disk after some time of non-activity?
<snip>
AFAIK the heads _never_ touch the surface, even in the "park" position, while the disk is spinning. If this event should occur, good by HD. They are only allowed to rest on the surface when the disk has come to complete stop.
Ralph
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [email protected]
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs