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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Oliver who wrote (4434)	9/14/1998 11:41:00 PM
From: RagTimeBand	Respond to of 9256

>>Isn't the head ever damaged?<< Yes Regards - Emory

To: Mark Oliver who wrote (4434)	9/15/1998 11:28:00 AM
From: UpwardBound	Respond to of 9256

Mark, You ask: "Isn't the head ever damaged?" In the disk drive industry, the head flying over a disk is often likened to flying a 747 at an altitude of a few inches. What happens if the 747 starts skidding on the surface? Actually not much happens at first since hard drives are designed to have a sort of head crash every time you shut down your computer. On power loss, drives latch the actuator and the heads gently land on the disk surface, sliding to a gradual stop just like the 747. Every drive has a 'landing zone' where the disks have a special texture to keep the heads from sticking after the disks stop rotating. Disks are coated with a lubricant so that the drive can withstand about 20,000 power cycles (maybe more) without damage. But in the catastrophic sense where a data head stops flying continuously at full speed, all kind of terrible things happen after a while. The lubricant fails and the media (magnetic coating) is scraped off and smeared onto the head and debris is strewn all over the interior of the drive. Eventually, all the coating is gone and the head starts scraping away at the aluminum substrate. By this time, the contamination floating around inside will start to cause other heads to crash. As the head scrapes away at the disk, the MR sripe (the read element) will most likely short out and never work again. Eventually (if the drive doesn't shut itself off first) the heads stick to the disk and are ripped off the actuator. Then they go flying around trashing things until they stop. Bottom line: Keep your data backed up!! --UpwardBound