On 7/25/07, Brad Campbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > Manu Abraham wrote: > > > > > > On 7/25/07, *Brad Campbell* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> > > > wrote: > > > > G'day all, > > > > I ask this here as I know there are a few who've used these little > > wonder boxes. > > > > This machine has a laptop hard disk in it. One feature of laptop > > hard disks is they can be asked to > > auto-park the head after x seconds of idle time. This is all well > > and good on a laptop as it often > > prevents moving and bumping trashing the drive. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > What, real crap. All modern drives do auto parking. You've heard about > > Landing Zone's (LZ) ? > > No, I am talking about unloading not parking. Big difference.
See your original post, my reply was for that. ;-) > This drive already has 145,000 unload > cycles on it and it's rated for about 600,000. > > It's that little clicking sound a laptop drive makes as it unloads / reloads > the head. > > Notwithstanding the huge latency penalty when trying to access data and the > head has to re-load, > it's just wearing out the mechanism a boatload faster than it needs to Just check whether your drive is doing "idle immediate" according to the ATA specs You can find the latest specs at www.t13.org just for ex: my drive supports the Idle and Idle Immediate commands Idle 97H or E3H Idle Immediate 95H or E1H http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/ata/cuda7200pm.pdf HTH Manu
