[Bug 952556] Re: [Precise] [Hardware-killer] HD restarts every few seconds

Wed May 16 13:33:04 UTC 2012

The average laptop HD life can typically stand :

~ 40,000 - 60,000 disk spin-up

~ 600,000 - 800,000 heads load-unload cycles

So it's quite normal (and desirable) that you load-unload heads much
more frequently than you spin the disk.

Furthermore loading heads is a matter of a fraction of a second, while
spinning disk takes several seconds...

Furthermore an HD with "parked" heads is much much more shock-proof than
an HD with flying heads (some laptops HDs have a freefall sensor that
automagically parks the heads when the disk is falling and before it
crashes on the floor, but this is outside the scope of this bug ;-) so
keeping the heads parked as much as possible makes sense, when talking
about laptops that are subject to shocks and vibrations.

So basically you need to divide the time you'd like your disk to live by
600,000 to determine the pace at which you would allow your heads to
park, and by 40,000 to determine how often you'd like to allow your disk
to spin down. Then take some safety margin ;-)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/952556

Title:
  [Precise] [Hardware-killer] HD restarts every few seconds

Status in “hdparm” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “hdparm” source package in Precise:
  Fix Released
Status in “hdparm” source package in Quantal:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  [Impact]
  This issue has the potential to cause additional mechanical wear and tear on rotational hard drives by causing them to spin up and down more frequently than in previous Ubuntu releases.  While the intent of a development change in the precise cycle was to allow drives to spin down sooner and stay spun down, in practice users report their drives spin back up quickly.  Until this is resolved, an aggressive spin-down policy is dangerous for hardware and inappropriate.

  [Test Case]
  1. On a laptop with a rotational hard drive, unplug main power and run on battery.
  2. Run sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda|grep Load_Cycle_Count repeatedly, to observe that the count increases once every few seconds.
  3. Install hdparm from precise-proposed.
  4. Plug the laptop back into main power, then unplug it again.
  5. Run the command from step 2 again.  Observe that the count is no longer increasing or is increasing much more slowly.  (Note that the precise behavior will vary from hard drive to hard drive, and on some systems there will be no difference visible at all.)

  [Regression Potential]
  For some users the current setting does not meaningfully increase wear and tear on their drives, but changing it will increase power consumption.  This seems to be a necessary evil since there's no single power saving setting that works well for all drives.

  Hi,

  After update from Oneiric to Precise Beta 1, kernel 3.2.0-18-generic,
  I notice that, when on battery, my Dell XPS  M1330 laptop has its HD
  spin down, then restart, very, very, very often, which means several
  times per minute.

  At this pace the HD won't live long, and this reminds to me a problem
  we had few years ago with "disk killers" linuxes that were
  unloading/reloading the HD heads much too often, killing disks in a
  couple of months.

  So I prefer to ring the alarm bell early...

  Upgrading from Oneiric to Precise I didn't change any power management
  parameter, but it definitely didn't do this before (and still doesn't
  do this on other distros I have on multiboot, so that's no hardware
  issue, only Precise does that on my machine...)

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: linux-image-3.2.0-18-generic 3.2.0-18.28
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-18.28-generic 3.2.9
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-18-generic i686
  AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24.
  ApportVersion: 1.94.1-0ubuntu2
  Architecture: i386
  AudioDevicesInUse:
   USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
   /dev/snd/controlC0:  michel     3044 F.... pulseaudio
  CRDA:
   country FR:
    (2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
    (5170 - 5250 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
    (5250 - 5330 @ 40), (N/A, 20), DFS
    (5490 - 5710 @ 40), (N/A, 27), DFS
  Card0.Amixer.info:
   Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xf6dfc000 irq 46'
     Mixer name	: 'Silicon Image SiI1392 HDMI'
     Components	: 'HDA:83847616,1028020a,00100201 HDA:10951392,1028020a,00100000'
     Controls      : 33
     Simple ctrls  : 19
  CheckboxSubmission: 1ea6109db29b53f721a523a77b7f3abf
  CheckboxSystem: d00f84de8a555815fa1c4660280da308
  Date: Sun Mar 11 22:25:00 2012
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=0e7ded16-c4fc-4f81-8562-3cb1196809d3
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
  MachineType: Dell Inc. XPS M1330
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=fr_FR:fr:en_US:en
   TERM=xterm
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
  ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.2.0-18-generic root=/dev/mapper/VG1-UBUNTU ro clocksource=hpet quiet splash vt.handoff=7
  RelatedPackageVersions:
   linux-restricted-modules-3.2.0-18-generic N/A
   linux-backports-modules-3.2.0-18-generic  N/A
   linux-firmware                            1.71
  SourcePackage: linux
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-03-10 (1 days ago)
  dmi.bios.date: 12/26/2008
  dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.bios.version: A15
  dmi.board.name: 0N6705
  dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.chassis.type: 8
  dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA15:bd12/26/2008:svnDellInc.:pnXPSM1330:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0N6705:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
  dmi.product.name: XPS M1330
  dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

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