Ubuntu is killing your hdd!

[schultz]

Yes, this is it. Ubuntu is killing my (and eventually yours) hard drive!

My machine is a HP ze4950 laptop. I have ran Kubuntu in it for a day only, since I noticed a very grave bug.

It happens Ubuntu (and Gentoo, as far as I can tell) kills your hdd's. This is because upon power off, the kernel sends the FLUSH CACHE message to the disk to flush the disk write cache, which cause it to spin up. Then it suddenly shuts down making no call to the STANDBY signal to make the disk stop. The result is that the hdd keeps spinning as the power is off. Modern hdd's (yours, if it works after rebooting), can prevent such damage by taking the head off the disk surface just after power down so it does not hurt the disk in such situation. This is called an emergency unload. Technical specifications say doing this instead of the regular standby can reduce the drive's life time by about a rate of thrity (30) times. The symptoms of this is a weird noise upon shutdown (power off). It is like a "pop"!

All of this is known, I believe. Windows XP is as bad, it does the same mistake. The problem, though, is that Windows came with a HP drives DVD which loaded some files in the system and, after that, the noise and the emergency unload stopped. This DVD has hardware drives which does the right thing with my disks.

I hate Microsoft and Bill Gates. The problem is that only XP can turn down my disk properly. As soon as this bug is fixed, I will use Ubuntu again. Linux (not exactly Ubuntu) is very high quality software and I really desire using it, but I can not afford paying my hdd's life as price.

The problem is that I began using Ubuntu because in the laptop team testing page it said that this laptop is well supported by feisty fawn. It is not, feisty kills my hdd. And that is not only in power off, but in suspend-to-ram and hibernate. Hibernate does three "pop"'s!

Such a serious bug must be fixed! It is thrashing hdd's all over the world!

Ok, it is true that as the software is free, the community fixes it if it wants and gives us no warranty. This is acceptable. What is not acceptable is the lie that Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is ok to use in laptops. Lying is not nice! And this is stamped in ubuntu.org.

(Sorry if mistaken.)

[tschneiter]

It sounds like you know quite a lot about the proper shutdown procedures... why not have a poke around on your own?
This is something that, if it is confirmed, would be really nice to have fixed. I like my laptop's hdd

[schultz]

The knowledge I gathered is fruit of a 2 hours search in Google and in the development forums.

I know nothing about low-level linux or computing.

I am just listing my symptoms and performing a diagnosis.

The point is, that noise is not healthy and should be fixed.

[LaRoza]

My Ubuntu box doesn't do that, and I have rebooted, and shutdown the machine many times.

No noise was noticed on any of those times.

Are there any instances of Ubuntu killing an hdd? Or is it just speculation?

[schultz]

Apparently that only happens in laptops.

I do not know why. Perhaps it is because in PC's, the noise goes within the machine, so you can not listen.

[jacob01]

then just dont use stand by then

[Old Pink]

Mine doesn't do that, on any of my systems. And if you think XP does this too, surely thousands of hard drives are doing it hundreds of times per day? There'd be a much higher destruction rate. I think you're reading up on FUD bullcrap.

[kostkon]

My friend, I want to thank you for your interest in Open Source, and in Ubuntu particularly.

Thus, if you believe this is happening indeed, it would be very good if you could fill a bug report at Launchpad. It seems that this is a kernel bug, but maybe if you report it, the Ubuntu kernel team will try to research and fix it or at least send it upstream.

In case you want to know more about bug reporting, you can get info here.

To say my opinion, I am not sure I can believe that this problem is so widespread; maybe it is happening only in some cases.

[schultz]

I never said the problem is widespread, just that Ubuntu kills hdd's, like mine.

I heard that in Dapper this does not happen, it began in Edgy and Feisty Fawn.

I also heard it concerns mostly laptops.

WinXP does it only in laptops (my family's PC does not do it). But for those there is those driver DVD's. HP's DVD solve the problem in WinXP. So few people might come across this bug.

Nevertheless, I can not understand how the laptop testing team said my computer was ok with Ubuntu in spite of the loud noises.

I shall fill a bug report. I took Ubuntu out of the PC, but shall put it in again once the bug is fixed. Of course, if I can make Gentoo function properly then I shall go for Gentoo instead.

Thanks for the answers, although they do not solve the vicious problem.

[schultz]

Man, reporting bugs is so difficult, non intuitive!

Is not there a way to do it easier?

I also can not send debugging results because this happens in power off and I have taken Ubuntu off.