Re: Shut down or leave on?
Raquel writes:
> I also understand that when the hard disks get power that the
> platters torque just a tad, if not causing heads to come into
> contact with the platter, at least causing wear on bearings.
As somebody also posted, the heads get parked when the
drive powers down. If you listen to one start up, you will hear
head activity a few seconds after the platter comes up to speed
even if the data cables are not connected. The controller on the
drive board handles this housekeeping stuff. When the power is
turned off, you can hear the head snap back to a safe position
immediately. I think some drives exercise the head rack during
lulls of activity to keep it from stiffening up.
My main Linux box used to run WindowsNT and I would hear
the main drive rhythmically ticking at times. I would say to my
wife, "God only knows what the script monkeys are up to today."
Then, she bought a laptop and I put Debian on that
original computer. It has two IDE drives in it and one of them
still makes that same noise when nothing should be happening. It
will do that for a minute or two and then fall silent so I think
the controller is just flexing the head rack.
Martin McCormick
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