Ok, so there are probably better forums for this one, but now that I'm here... 😊

- Western Digital has this "Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL)" 'feature' on some of their IDE drives, but I just don't get WHY ?
I.e. how can a drive get worn just by reading or writing, as long as there's no* actual touching of the disk itself ?

*: Or maybe this has something to do with it ?:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.js … &isnumber=30374
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16604244
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7353525.html

- But even so, WD's 'frequent sweeping' still makes no sense to me.
What good would that do ? Is the arm then actually touching the surface ?
And if so, why would it help to damage the rest of the disk, 'evening' it out?

...from WD description:
"Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL) - The drive arm frequently sweeps across the disk to reduce uneven wear on the drive surface common to audio video streaming applications"

WESTERN DIGITAL AV 320GB HDD CE 7200rpm
WD3200AVJB

Googling this PWL does not seem to help much, or I'm using the wrong key words.

Though, there must be SOME reason for all this, as even Hitachi has this "Media Maintenance enhancements" tech, which they claim is to "prevent track wear-out from around-the-clock operation".
Not sure what exactly that does, though.

Oh well... at least I've put it in writing, which kinda helps a strained mind a little 😁

Just a bit strange that I'm unable to find any useful info about this on the net. 😖

Sorry for any ranting tendencies...