Proper parking utility for a WD1002-27X?

[bhtooefr]

I just put a WD1002-27X in my 5155, and am looking for a suitable parking utility for it.

I've got an ST-238R connected to it, properly LLFed to 615/4/26, and the parking utilities I've tried that state the parking cylinder (PARKIT.COM and DMGPark) say it's using 614, and DMGPark refuses to accept anything higher.

This is a problem, because 614 would be the last data cylinder! (Specified landing zone is 670, but I can't even get 615.) Interestingly, the previous controller (a WD1002S-WX2) had it LLFed to 612/4/17, and PARKIT was parking it on 614 then, too. (I'm amazed that cylinder 614 didn't have any bad sectors detected by SpinRite, to be honest.)

Unfortunately, I can't find any good documentation on how to properly park a WD1002-27X. I'm guessing that it's rejecting attempts to step to a cylinder higher than 614, so is there a dedicated INT 13h parking command like later controllers have? Or should I re-LLF the drive to, say, 617/4/26, and then mark everything on 615 and 616 in the bad track list, so at least a parking program can step a couple cylinders out?

 

[Stone]

First, you don't park the controller -- you park the drive.

Since 614 is the last cylinder on that drive it's the correct place to park it. You're parking programs are working correctly. Just let them do their thing.

BTW, you really don't need to park a drive unless you're shipping or moving it. If you don't intend to attack it with a baseball bat simply turning it off is quite sufficient. I have several ST-238Rs and ST-225s (they're physically the same drive) and I never park them and they still run fine after ~ thirty years.

 

[bhtooefr]

I was under the impression that you were supposed to step past the last cylinder for parking, because you didn't want to park on a data cylinder. (And, I mean, specified landing zone for a ST-225 or ST-238R is cylinder 670, although I am aware that most stuff doesn't go anywhere near that far.) And, I'm also aware that you park the drive, not the controller, but if the controller doesn't let you step past the last data cylinder in the normal way, I'd think there would have to be another method of parking implemented by the controller.

 

[Timo W.]

Stone is correct. Parking is really only needed when moving the system. You're also right that without parking, the heads land on an area containing data. However, this doesn't cause damage (and this you just proven yourself when Spinrite did not find any media errors in the parking zone). It's not wrong to always park the drive before removing power, but it's simply not needed.

 

[Stone]

... (And, I mean, specified landing zone for a ST-225 or ST-238R is cylinder 670, although I am aware that most stuff doesn't go anywhere near that far.) ...

No, this is taken from the manual:

...The read/write heads may be parked by issuing a seek to any cylinder between 615-670...

So 615 (or 614 if you start counting cylinders from 0) is correct.

 

[bhtooefr]

Except, to quote further...

Read/Write Head Park Zone
-------------------------
ST213/ST225/ST238R
The read/write heads may be parked by issuing a seek to any cylinder between 615-670

ST225R/ST250R
The read/write heads may be parked by issuing a seek to any cylinder between 667-670

At power-on the drive will recalibrate to Track 0. If the heads are parked while power is still applied, any step pulse will cause the unit to recalibrate to Track 0.

Other places in that documentation count from 0 too. So, it's parking on the last data cylinder (the 615th cylinder, cylinder number 614), not a parking cylinder (the 616th through 671st cylinders, cylinder numbers 615 through 670). I'm pretty sure formatted capacity is 32,747,520 bytes, too, which would mean 615 cylinders are in use (counting from 0, 0-614).

And, this machine is a portable, it'll get moved around some.

 

[fatwizard]

It's really about track zero. If track 614 gets buggered, you are out a few sectors. If track zero gets buggered, you are out a drive. The heads are positioned at track zero most of the time when the drive is idle. If you just shut it down, that's likely where the heads will land. Bump it too hard and...