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The heads fly on a fluid cushion when spun up, they must physically land when the thing spins down. The head landing/takeoff operations are sources of physical
by newnewpdro 7y ago
The heads fly on a fluid cushion when spun up, they must physically land when the thing spins down. The head landing/takeoff operations are sources of physical wear.
Assuming a brushless motor and quality sealed ball bearings, it could be argued that the drive wears less kept spun up all the time.
My understanding is that spinning them down is primarily a power-saving measure.
- dredmorbius 7y agoHence head parking. That's automatic in virtually all HDDs.
- newnewpdro 7y agoWhen I last read up on this, which admittedly was over a decade ago, head parking was just a matter of locating the heads over an unused region of the platters. The head still goes through a landing and takeoff cycle, so the head still sees physical contact. It's just avoiding doing it over the data portion of the platters.