Care of hard disk drives – Kreisen 3 8 6 X / X E User Manual

Page 115

Advertising
background image

permanently mounted inside the drive housing. Several hard
disk platters are stacked vertically in the drive housing and
sealed in a dustproof casing.

Second, a hard disk holds much more information than a

diskette. The “high-capacity” diskettes used in your computer

can only hold a little over one million bytes. The hard disk can

hold up much more data than floppy disk.

Finally, as mentioned above, a hard disk is much faster than a

floppy disk drive. The main reason for this is that the hard disk

platters are rigid, allowing them to be rotated at a much higher

rate than floppy diskettes, which have to move relatively slowly

so as to avoid damage.

Care of Hard Disk Drives

As you can see, hard disk drives are very precise devices. This

precision makes for a delicate mechanism. Even though your

hard disk drive is built to withstand the rigors of shipping, it
should be moved as little, and as gently, as possible. If you need
to move your computer system a short distance, be careful not
to drop or bump it. For greater protection, if you need to

transport the computer in a car, or ship it by truck or plane,

pack your system in its original shipping boxes.

The TGSHIP command should be run whenever you are going
to move the main system unit. This command moves the
read/write heads inside the hard disk drive to a “safety zone,”
where they won’t accidentally scratch the surface of the drive

platters. TGSHIP.COM is a special DOS command file

included with your system. You should copy this file into the

root directory of your hard disk drive. For information on hard
disk directory structures, see the “Organizing Your Hard Disk”

section of this chapter.

6-2

Using Your Hard Disk

Advertising