Subject: RE: Traveling w/ hardware
From: Christopher E. Brown (cbrown@woods.net)
Date: Fri Jan 04 2002 - 12:41:13 AKST
On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Mark-Nathaniel Weisman wrote:
>
> All newer drives (after 1996 or so) automatically park the heads.
> However if you are shipping hard drives, I personally use mailbox
> etc... They seem to do a great job, and I've not lost a drive yet
> (knock on wood). Hope that helps.
*ALL* hard drives *NOT* using linear heads driven with a
stepper motor autopark. Any modern drive using a swingarm and
voicecoil affair (pretty much everything after 1990) has a spring or
magnet load to snap the heads back when power is lost.
MAJOR NOTE: Drives using a swingarm cannot take side loads!!! They
will park the heads on the outer tracks, however shocks from the side
(for example box being dropped on its side) make the shock ratings
meaningless. A drive that can take 200Gs non operative shock flat, may
only me able to handle 10 - 20Gs shock from the side. 20Gs sounds
like a fair bit, but is actually only a drop of several feet.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Fri Jan 04 2002 - 12:41:27 AKST