On Sun, Dec 04, 2005 at 03:58:26PM -0500, Nick Holland wrote: > up toasting them, far from the end of the world. I can give you a very > good explaination (or several) for why a disk powered down mid-write > could be dammaged, it is really odd how RARELY this actually happens in > real life. I come from the era when they told you to open the floppy > doors before powering down the machine and close them AFTER powering > them back up.
My understanding is modern drives actually tap the (substantial) kinetic energy stored in their platters to temporarily turn the drive motor into a generator, when power failure is detected. Usually that gives them the necessary milliseconds to get their heads parked before the flotation effect is lost, and possibly even enough time to finish up some writes. /Hugh
