Internal HDD stops and launches spinning randomly

[qjmann]

HDD in my desktop PC stops spinning randomly - every few minutes. OS - Ubuntu 12. This not causes total system hang, but when I perform any action, it waits until HDD will "wake up", usually about 30 seconds or more. I can hear how it stops and starts spinning. Looks like some power saving mode in laptops, but very long delay until HDD decides to start working again.
Possibly, issue appeared after last system updates - a few days ago HDD worked ok.

[qjmann]

I tried this command:

sudo /sbin/hdparm -S0 /dev/sda

... but this not helps. Issue stills the same:
Every few minutes my HDD causes some launched application to hang for a couple of seconds. After that it spins up and then click, at that point application unfreezes.

It looks like this HDD is ready to die. 6 bad clusters. Maybe bad clusters causes this issue with spinning down.

[ahallubuntu]

Yes, sounds like a bad hard drive. Time to replace it. Hard drives fail all the time.

[americanman28]

you may have a GREEN DRIVE aka power saving

[qjmann]

you may have a GREEN DRIVE aka power saving

Tried to disable power-saving spin-down via hdparm, no effect. Installed Ubuntu onto new HDD, no problems yet. Old HDD is almost dead, I think.