HDD head parking

[frozenfire75i]

I have an ST-412 inside my IBM 5161 EXP uint... I was wondering do you park the head each time you power it down? Or only when you move it?

 

[Jorg]

I'm jealous about your expansion unit

I park it every time I think I won't use it anymore that day. Or I use the autopark utility.

 

[barythrin]

As long as you aren't going to walk into your desk at the middle of the night or move the system, a shutdown should be ok.

If you really want to be overly cautious, there's nothing wrong with parking it though. New drives all autopark so we don't have to worry about it anymore.

 

[Terry Yager]

Actually, you need to park it every shutdown, or it defeats the purpose. If the drive powers down while the heads are 'floating' above a data area, the head just drops onto the platter possibly causing damage to the data and/or the hardware (aka, a crash). Parking moves the heads to an unused cylinder, known as the 'parking zone' before dropping them.

--T

 

[dongfeng]

I autopark mine every time it is switched off - just in case

 

[frozenfire75i]

That's what I have been doing, parking at shutdown I agree it would be better safe then sorry. But I did not know if it was overkill/needed or not.

 

[wmmullaney]

You can't be to careful.

 

[frozenfire75i]

Very Ture!

You can't be to careful.

 

[wmmullaney]

Yep, so tooray.