Somebody (who usually talks about things that she knows nothing about) suggested a friend to “dock” her hardrive before packing it for moving… WTF is that?
Back in the old days when hard drives were a bit more fragile than they are now, you used to have to dock or the term I heard more “park” your hard drive, which was to run a little program which would move the drive heads away from the drive platter. This would ensure that if you moved the hard drive they wouldn’t bounce against the platters and cause damage.
Unless you have an ancient hard drive, its not really an issue today.
I believe she is referring to making sure that the little arm on which the read-write head is is locked away to the side of the device, not somehwere over the fragile disk. If the thing is jarred, the tip might gouge into the disk.
I’m not sure, but I think that in modern HDs, the little arm is automatically stuck at the side, and only up and out when the device is on and spinning.
This is something you did a long time ago (well, tech speaking a long time ago). The platters were larger & more sensitve to movement. The write arms were also a bit more kludgy as cdhostage notes. I forget the steps exactly, but you basically were locking the platters & arm in place so they would not be damaged by a move. When you first installed a HD, you had to undock it, as it was docked for shipping.
As you might guess, this is no longer strictly necessary, and I can’t really recall a HD that could actually do this with recently.
That said, the gist of the advice is still sound - computers & their parts should be well buffered if you are moving them. Unless you are talking about moving it to the desk across the hall.
On early hard drives, there was a software command you could send to the drive that would “park” the heads. This would, on the drive’s next power down, move the Read/Write heads into a position where they wouldn’t bang against the encoded part of the platter should the unit get shaken.
I haven’t seen this on recent drives, because I would asume, that the drives are sturdier, and that they do this automatically on every powerdown.
I’ve never heard it called “docking” though. In computers that term usually refers to plugging a portable into some sort of base station.
(If your friend has a scanner, they may want to look in their reference manuals or online to see if the scanning mechanism needs to be parked before transport. Unlike hard drives, I’m pretty sure this is still a somewhat common requirement.)
The SDMB SuperGeeks save the day again. Thank you guys. Would any of you marry me. 
I’ll consider marrying you if you are strong and female.
What a bizarre coincidence
Parking the HD? Ah, yes, I would think that Windoz does that when you shut down. I haven’t confirmed that though.
Every modern hard drive I’ve encountered (i.e. in the last 10 years or so) automatically parks the heads when the drive’s power is cut.
There are two basic ways of parking the drive: moving the heads to a permanently unused area of the drive, or wedging the heads so they’re some distance above the platter. The latter method, of course, can still cause problems if the drive is subjected to shock – the head can flex on its arm and hit the platter.
This is called a head crash, and it’s a really nasty thing to happen.
For certain types of modern hard drives, there still is a firmware command available to park the heads in a very safe position. The software that comes with the hard drive will list it on the advanced options menu (if the drive supports it). Good for shipping the drive when it’s all by itself. But you shouldn’t need it if you leave the drive in the machine and don’t drop the PC.