Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!ucbvax!decwrl!purdue!bu-cs!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu!kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu!rob From: rob@kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Booting Summary: You can boot from disk, safely. Keywords: booting, disk integrity Message-ID: <378@accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu> Date: 10 Jul 88 22:32:50 GMT Sender: news@accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: rob@kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) Organization: Ohio State Univ, College of Engineering Lines: 21 There have been several recent posting in this newsgroup to the effect that booting from a floppy is dangerous, that a HD might damage the data if started from an unparked state etc. I don't think so. Reason: It takes a digital circuit at most a couple of hundred microseconds to complete any power-up state races. In the case of the hard disk or a 5.25 floppy, the rw heads are removed from the media by means of a spring. This effect has to be overcome before anything can happen; this a mechanical phenomenon, it will take milliseconds. In the case of the 3.5 floppy, this device first has to slide open the door on the disk before it can even start to think about lowering the heads onto the media. If you listen during power-up, you will notice that there is a pause of about a second before the disk door slides open. In summary, by the time the rw heads get to the point where they could do damage, the control circuitry has long since settled down. If there are problems, this reflects either a design error in the hard_ and or software, or a transient glitch. Rob Carriere