Important: Ubuntu can hurt laptop disks

punky · 31-10-2007, 10:22

An important bug picked up for the Ubuntu laptop users here:

Quote:

When switching to battery power, /etc/acpi/power.sh issues the command hdparm -B 1 to all block devices. This leads to extremely frequent load cycles. For example, my new thinkpad has already done well over 7000 load cycles -- in only 100 hours. That's at least one unloading per minute. Googling for "load unload cycles notebook OR laptop" shows that most laptop drives handle up to 600,000 such cycles.

...

Confirmed also with my Hitachi HTS541210H9SA00 (which has used up 10% of its life in less than a month

).

There's instructions on how to change the default values. It only affects laptops because it happens when switching to battery mode.

xpod · 31-10-2007, 12:10

I have 4 spare drives at the ready with the money i saved not buying Vista

Heres a related discussion over at UF though.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=596602&page=3

OOPs

EDIT:
http://www.advogato.org/person/mjg59/diary/82.html

Lots of interesting reading out there.
Plus, it`s always a good excuse for a poll

http://www.uluga.ubuntuforums.org/sh...ght=laptop+bug

dragon · 31-10-2007, 14:14

Backup your importatant data (the number of people that don't

)

If the harddrive is in warrenty its not a problem if it does die becuase the manufacturer will have to replace it.

If its not then considering most warrentys are at least 3years you've had a resonable life out of it... and drives are getting cheaper all the time.

Hard-drives are not as fragile as people think.
Of course dropping them when they're spinning is never a good idea.

xpod · 31-10-2007, 15:11

If this is(?) some kind of "default settings" the hardware manufacturers themselves are provinding in bios`s & fw`s then i wonder just how many folks....with their 6 & 12 month warrantys are finding those darn hardrives dying out after a first year or so.

The cynic in me would say that sounds like perfect timing, for the HW suppliers of course.

Either way,i think the thread title is potentially a little misleading.

keithwalton · 31-10-2007, 15:29

Alot of hard drives these days have 1 year warrenties, and i read this 'feature' would kill a hard drive at min 12 months so could be slightly more and thus out of warrenty.

It seems odd that manufacturers would set the drives to spin up/down every minute on battery power

xpod · 31-10-2007, 15:31

Quote:

I’m a big fan of Ubuntu. I don’t want to see Ubuntu hurt because it’s not Ubuntu who is setting these aggressive power management defaults.

The last 2 or 3 posts in this this thread over at UF may clarify things a little and help those who are possibly worried about this(from an Ubuntu point of view) determine wether their own drives suffer from the issue.