Fea tu re D es cri pt io ns
Maxtor Atlas 10K III 6-7
The disk drive performs a s elf-diagnostic test immediately at power up. Both the Fault
LED and a Busy LED b riefly illuminate during spin-u p as a lamp test.
If the drive passes the self-tests (and the spin-up jumper is installed), it spins up and
performs fur th er diagno sti cs on the Head D i sk Assembly (HDA). Th e dr ive indicate s
“not ready” unt il th e H DA te s ts are com ple te d s uc cess f ull y.
The drive diagnostics test the following:
•RAM and ROM chi p s
•Buffer memory
•Gate array chips
•Read/write encoding circuits
•Basic servo functions
Afte r a SELECT ION T IM E fo llo w i n g po wer-on , the disk dr iv e is able to res p ond
with appropriate status and sense data to the TEST UNIT READY, INQUIRY, and
REQUEST SENSE commands.
During nor ma l dr ive operati on, cer t ai n per i odic functi ons occur a uto mati call y so t he
drive can verify and maintain the integrity of its operations and optimize performance.
The operations performed include those listed below.
•Move/Switch idle heads
•Adaptive seek profile calibration
•ROM checks um
Such periodic functions can make the drive appear to be active when no commands
are outstanding, because the drive appears to be seeki ng. Periodic calibra t ions occur
only after the drive has been inactive for 30 seconds.
Note: If a media access command is received during a calibration, the
drive aborts the calibration process and acts on t he command.
If desired, calibrations can be suspended to reduce dr ive overhead by setting the
Manual Calibrat ion bit in the (Vendor) Special Function Cont rol page. If this is done,
manual calibrations can st ill be initiated by performing a REZERO UNIT command.
The Host Processor can comm and the drive to perform diagnostic tests and report
statu s usi n g REC EIVE a n d SE ND DIA GNOST IC RESU LTS comma n ds. C e rtai n
parameters can be sent to th e drive to alter or enhance the performance of the
diagnostic tests specif ied.