Drive constantly grinding ...

[There can be only one.]

Yeah, this makes sense.  Thanks for the information, it saves me
some worry ;-)

> What you are hearing is likely what Seagate calls 'dithering'.
> When the drive is otherwise idle, the head is moved to new locations
> periodically so that it doesn't pass over the same piece of media
> for extended periods of time.  The Seagate representative told us
> (Pluto) that this was done to ensure that if a plater contained an
> imperfection that caused the head to 'brush' the platter occassionally
> (not a head crash) the head would not wear out the platter.  For
> real time applications (Pluto offers real time video editor/server
> products) where you want the head to stay where you put it, this
> is somewhat annoying.  Pluto's work around is to send a Test Unit
> Ready command to the drive every 500ms or so which restarts the
> 'diterhing timer' and prevents the extra seeks.
> 
> --
> Justin
> 
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at FreeBSD.org
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