OT: how many rankmount units is a tower-case

perryh at pluto.rain.com perryh at pluto.rain.com
Sun Jan 4 12:49:11 PST 2009


> If a hard disk formatted and used in a position , in that position
> it may be used if manufacturer is NOT advised a specific position.
> After loading of files into hard disk , change of position may
> cause difficulty in reading of already recorded data .  This point
> should be considered .

Sun, at least, used to warn about this back in the MFM/ESDI days,
recommending that a disk should be reformatted if its orientation
were changed, but those drives used all their heads for data and
depended on reproduceable mechanical positioning to align the heads
at the selected cylinder.  I'm not sure it still applies to drives
that dedicate one head to fine-tuning track position by reading
factory-recorded servo patterns.  (Quick check, if "actual" geometry
is known:  a drive with an odd number of heads most likely has a
dedicated servo surface.)  BTW most drives of that era, while OK on
either side as well as "right side up", were *not* supposed to be
run "upside down" -- the bearings were not designed for that.


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