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.
Some background of the problem :
If your harddrive spins down and spins up again your Load_Cycle_Count increases by one. If your harddrive head parks and unparks again your Load_Cycle_Count increases by one.
You don’t want your Load_Cycle_Count to increase too fast.
Harddrive manufacturers seem to claim most harddrives can handle at least 600.000 Load_Cycles but this is probably an average under ideal circumstances. My harddrive started to die slowly when at a Load_Cycle_Count of 200.000.
Ubuntu is NOT causing aggressive power management.
The following things might instead cause aggressive power management settings :
* your (laptop) harddrive firmware might have aggressive power management defaults (operating system independent)
* your (laptop) BIOS might set your harddrive to use aggressive power management (operating system independent)
* you might have enabled laptop-mode in /etc/default/acpi-support (disabled by default) which will set your harddrive to use aggressive power management
These aggressive power management settings are set by your BIOS or harddrive firmware. Windows and/or Mac OS X might be overriding these settings which might make Ubuntu look bad if Ubuntu doesn't override these settings.
Read here what Matthew Garret an experienced and well known Ubuntu Developer has said about this problem :
http://www.advogato.org/person/mjg59/diary/82.html
for more information see :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ort/+bug/59695
http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/200...er-management/