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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site allegra.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!rdg
From: rdg@allegra.UUCP (Ron Gordon)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: disk landing zone
Message-ID: <5118@allegra.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Sep-85 22:22:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: allegra.5118
Posted: Mon Sep 16 22:22:57 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Sep-85 02:46:57 EDT
Distribution: net.micro.pc
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 23

Several vendors who provide external hard disk drives for the pc
have incorporated a very nice feature in their device drivers:
after the drive has been idle for about 10 seconds, they park the
heads on the "landing zone" an area on the disk that is not used
for data storage.  this is normally done, for example, when the
system is prepared for shipping by running a special software
utility.  however, it is very rare that an actual user
takes the time or trouble to run such a utility by hand before
moving the machine to a new location or rolling the machine to
another's office.  by incorporating this into the driver, the disk is
much better protected each time the user turns off the machine
or should a power outage occur.

the standard ms-dos drivers for the internal 10Mb drive do not
incorporate this feature.  however, it shouldn't be too dificult
to do by intercepting disk i/o calls and using the timer.  all that
is needed is a resident program to monitor disk activity and park
the heads if no activity occurs in a 10 second period.

has anyone written such a piece of code?  any pc wizards who would
like to rise to the occasion?  please respond to allegra!rdg and i'll
post the most well documented and cleanest solution that i receive.
-ron gordon