Which track was least reliable?

From: Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com>
Date: Tue Aug 25 23:34:09 1998

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Tony Duell wrote:

> > > "On disk platters," he said, "the inside track
> > > is the least reliable one."
> > >
> > >It was a very popular column.
> >
> > Of which ancient systems was this true?
>
> On drives that store the same number of bits/track - most floppies apart
> from Commodore and Mac ones, most 'raw-interfaced' hard disks (ST506,
> SMD, RK05, RL01, etc), the inner track has the smallest area storing each
> bit (think about it, the inner track is shorter).
>
> So, it's possible that the inner track is the least reliable. I've
> certainly had more floppies fail on the inner tracks than the outer ones.

On the other hand, one of the outer tracks - the one that contains the
directory - is accessed much more frequently than any other. It is there
that I have experienced the greatest number of failures.

                                                 - don
 
> > Today's CD-ROMs are the opposite, I've heard: as the head positions
> > to the outermost area of the disc, it tends to push dust along the
> > guides, and many CD drives accumulate a pile of dust out there,
> > preventing it from reaching "the end."
>
> Well, that problem is trivially solved by keeping the rails clean :-)...
>
> Seriously, some drives do a full seek (heads to both endstops) at
> spin-up. The RK07 certainly does. I suspect this would quite happily keep
> the dust down. Maybe CD-ROMs should as well.
>
>
>
> >
> > - John
> >
> >
>
> -tony
>
>

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Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 23:34:09 BST

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