4 ms·

Even in the DOS days, you still had to park the drive heads before shutting down. DOS even had a PARK command for that.

• andix 2y ago
  True, that was a good idea with some early hard drives, but only required if the PC was moved. In that period hard drives were a luxury, many pcs just had two floppy drives. One for the operating system and applications, the second one for data.
• userbinator 2y ago
  Only on early hard drives that used stepper motor actuators.
  • anonzzzies 2y ago
    ...but most people got their systems from their job in those days and so wouldn't get told this little tidbit for obvious reasons; You Must Park Before Swithing Off. I did get unlucky somewhere begin 80s when my father brought home a luggable, I didn't park, he lugged it back and the hd was damaged.
• marcosdumay 2y ago
  Yes, the GP is a more recent advancement. Before that, you had to set the hardware for turning off. There was a brief moment when the hardware was advanced enough to reach a safe configuration by itself, and the software was not advanced enough to need to synchronize state with everything. But maybe there's a lesson there, and the software should be able to shut itself down in a couple of seconds in the background, just like the hardware did.