Dear Nick I have confirmed the regular hits phenomenon. A hard disk spins continuously unless it is idle for quite a few minutes - depending on the power saving settings (30 min). Unlike in a tape or floppy drive, the read/write head never touches the disk surface, it just skims over the surface. In fact if the read/write head touches the magnetic surface for any reason, the disk is ruined. A 'hit' is when the hard drive mechanism get a command to read or write a sector or sectors. The only change that occurs during a hit is that the sensor arm may have to move. As the actuation of the sensor arm has no moving parts (purely magnetic) the chances of wear are negligible. Most wear takes place on spin-up. I don't really think that you have much to worry about. Yours sincererly Basil Fowler
Terrific. From Netraverse's website:
"Win4Lin enables Linux users to run popular Windows programs at native
speeds
without additional hardware or the need to dual boot..."
So what it seems is that in order to have the ability not to DUAL boot, I need to REBOOT every time I want to run windows under Linux or risk my hard drive being roasted and toasted.
I hope this is not really the case. I know that the netraverse people seem heinously overworked, and therefore try to quiet technical queries in a friendly yet ordinarily vague manner. I'll try the w4l mailing list - have you?
Nick
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