hard disk errors

[J.R. Smithson]

HELP! I've had my XENIX System V running on my IBM PC clone running
for 2 months. In that time I've had 3 separate occasions of bad
blocks on the hard disk. I'm using a Seagate ST225 (20Mb, 78ms)
with a DTC 5150BX controller.
The last time this happened, my system would not boot, it would
get hung just after completing the filesystem checks.
Looks like I'll have to reload the disk. No problem since I have
backups.
What I would like to know is what I can do to avoid this in the future.

1. Does turning off the power cause the heads on the hard disk to land
   on the platter and create bad tracks?
   Seems that I've seen the debate rage on this issue in other newsgroups
   and the concensus was that it was better to leave the machine powered
   up all the time to keep the heads from landing on the platter.

2. If the above is true, does XENIX have a utility to park the heads 
   over a safe zone before power off?	/etc/haltsys???
   I have the DOS utility included on the IBM diagnostic disk
   to park the heads for shipping. I ran it and it seemed strange to me
   that it worked for several minutes (disk made very strange seeking noise)
   and then terminated. I would think that this utility would just require
   a few hundred milliseconds to execute.

I'd leave the machine powered up all the time but it does throw out a bit
of RF interference for my TV.

Please post replies to this group as I'm sure all are interested.

	Jim Smithson {ihnp4}!ablnc!jrs2 (305)834-5439