MS-Dos 6.22 commands

The park command went out with dos 3.3 and the passing of the MFM and RLL drives.

These types of drives were very susceptible to shocks and bumps, and often would quit working if you formatted the drive with the machine horizontal, turned it off, and then set it on its edge.

IDE drives use a different, more reliable technology for the heads, with far less travel, negating the need for park.

The biggest difference came from the integrated electronics in IDE drives, getting rid of theneed for separate controller cards. The MFM drive heads would stop wherever the last seek request happened, whereas IDE drives reset back to the Landing Zone when idle.

Actually, most drives now park themselves using the remaining current when power loss is detected.

The park command is no longer a part of the current versions of DOS, nor is it a part of the command prompt emulators with Win 95 and new OS's

the park command is not included in Ms-dos V 6.22 and the windows based emulators in win9x/nt/2k

Thanxs everybody

Earler hard drives used a screw ratchet drive
for head positing. When the machine was
turned off the heads stayed where they were at
last use. This was why the park command
was used to position the heads over space or
non used platter.
In the later versions of this drive they used the
platter momentum to ratchet the heads back
to park.

Hard drives for the last several years use a
voice coil type technology. The heads are
spring loaded to the retracted position the
instant power is removed. The coil pulls the
head to its operating position.

So unless as one of the other answers said,
you have a real old system you just don't need
it.

I concur, there is no park the hard drive utility with the Windows versions of DOS.

Maxwell

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