do hard drive arms retract when not writing?

slinky2004 · 12-09-2005, 04:38 PM

i've been told for a long time not to move a comptuer while its on because the hard drive could get damaged. the reason for this was said to be that the hard drive arm was out and it would scratch the platters. what i want to know is: while the drive is spun up and active, is the arm always out on the disks, or does it extend to write, and retract when it's not writing? it seems like it would be a smart thing to do, i guess you could still damage a drive by moving it while it's writing though.

bigrigdriver · 12-09-2005, 04:49 PM

A few years ago, that was true. You had to shutdown the computer in order to park the heads, then move the computer. Unless I am sorely mistaken, newer generation drives park the heads unless actively involved in read/write functions.

It wouldn't hurt to be safe. Power down before moving the box.

Electro · 12-09-2005, 04:55 PM

While the hard drive is running the arm is just floating on a cushion of air by the rotation of the platters. The arm only parks when the platter rotation is slowing down. You can move the hard drive while it is on, but carefully move the hard drive by hand.