This is a demo of how the
Load/Unload system works on
Toshiba 30GB hard drive. The
drive was failing, as can be
seen during the initialization
phase. The video goes through
the following scenarios:

Normal load/unload during
idle

Emergency shutdown; the energy
to park the heads comes from
the spinning disc. The dri
more

This is a demo of how the
Load/Unload system works on
Toshiba 30GB hard drive. The
drive was failing, as can be
seen during the initialization
phase. The video goes through
the following scenarios:

Normal load/unload during
idle

Emergency shutdown; the energy
to park the heads comes from
the spinning disc. The drive
is rated for only 20,000
emergency shutdowns.

In the last scenario, we
simulate a failed parking of
the heads - the drive thinks
they are parked when they are
not. If power is cut, the
heads scratch the surface and
the drive is completely
destroyed, it can't even spin
up. This can happen if a
working drive is bumped the
wrong way, and I have in fact
pulled a drive in that
condition from a field laptop.
This rarely happens though. As
you can see, it is very
difficult to prevent the heads
from parking.
Notice that during idle, the
heads fly near the middle of
the platter and the servo is
off.

Category People & Blogs

Tags notebook, harddrive, load/unload, head, crash, hard, disk, drive, laptop, laptops