[Bug 59695] Re: High frequency of load/unload cycles on some hard disks may shorten lifetime

[dauerflucher]

Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ST980811AS (Dell Inspiron 1525) running Ubuntu
8.04.

Those harddisks are definitley affected by this issue. Round about 90000
cyles in 600 hours == 150 cycles / hour. I guess this was possibly kind
of positively influenced by listen to music a lot keeping my harddisk
busy.

I read through all the comments here - twice. Activated Laptop Mode as
described in the Ubuntu Wiki and manually edited values in laptop-
mode.conf. Except of some values I edited because they where changed by
the activation of laptop mode (like readahead and idle_timeout) I
checked various values for hdparm -B. Especially having a closer look on
HDD temperature when AC powered.

-B 255 == 42°C (idle) - 48°C (moderate busy)
-B 254 == 41°C (idle) - 45°C (moderate busy)
-B 192 == 37°C (idle) - 40°C (moderate busy)

All three values have the same effect on load_cycly_count - no more
clicking, no raising cycles.

This research I made was not very scientific and all in all I am
absolutly not very experienced with such technical stuff. So I do not
know how to achieve really significant results. But, I think I can dare
saying that hdparm -B 192 is an appropriate value for Seagate Momentus
5400.3 ST980811AS - at least when AC powered.


I would like to see a real fix for this issue in Ubuntu - and all the other OSes - but I already can see the problems the devs will run into when trying to find values to address the broad mass of different harddisks all reacting differently on different values. Not mentioning the problems with laptop mode which most recently raised from the same problem. A real fix might come one day but until then the only thing that really helps is documentation.

Personally I would blame the devs only for missing forewarnings
concerning this issue. It is know for a long time and I have to admit
the simple user I am was pretty shocked when reading about this problem
the first time some days ago.

Let's hope for the best.

-- 
High frequency of load/unload cycles on some hard disks may shorten lifetime
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/59695
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