laptop harddrive Load_Cycle_Count issue

[dumas045]

I just read about this problem yesterday, and I'm worried about my harddrive failing any minute.

Here's my numbers:
190 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 059 047 045 Old_age Always - 690159657
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 1669901
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 041 053 000 Old_age Always - 41 (Lifetime Min/Max 0/13)

Should I just wait till the harddrive gives or call up Lenovo about the problem and ask for a replacement?

Edit: I checked the health of the drive with the -H flag and it says it passed. Also ran the diagnostic tests of the bios and Seatools, both of which it passed. With these sort of numbers, shouldn't my laptop be acting crazy?

[I_can_see_the_light]

Ok, so I tried to set the APM manually by using

sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

but the output I got was

/dev/sda:
 setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD failed: Input/output error

I googled the error message and found a command to check whether my HDD support APM: sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda | grep AdvancedPM. Apparently it doesn't, as the output I got was: AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled

What do I do now? Is there any other way to force the drive not to park as often? I started synaptic and apparently laptop-mode-tools are installed. Could that be why the disk is parking so often (4.5 cycles/minute on average). I remember reading something about that somewhere, though I could be wrong.

My problems have been temporarily solved by using the workaround at Ubuntu Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerManagement. Can't believe I missed to check that site. Have been searching the net like a mad man for a solution since none of the ugly fixes worked for me. Load_cycle_count is still increasing a little to fast, but nothing like the the way it was before.

Can't believe how quiet the computer is when the HDD spins down

[I_can_see_the_light]

I just read about this problem yesterday, and I'm worried about my harddrive failing any minute.

Here's my numbers:
190 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 059 047 045 Old_age Always - 690159657
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 1669901
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 041 053 000 Old_age Always - 41 (Lifetime Min/Max 0/13)

Should I just wait till the harddrive gives or call up Lenovo about the problem and ask for a replacement?

Edit: I checked the health of the drive with the -H flag and it says it passed. Also ran the diagnostic tests of the bios and Seatools, both of which it passed. With these sort of numbers, shouldn't my laptop be acting crazy?

Those values might not necessarily be true. If you haven't already done this i suggest you check how much Load_cycle_count increase each time the head parks. If it increases by, say 16 there is a good chance your true value is 16 times lower than the output you got.

As my HDD didn't support Advanced power management I couldn't use any of the ugly fixes but this link seem to have provided me with a breath of air.

[Arthur Archnix]

This is what happens when ubuntu/debian devs just take something (pm-utils) and slap it on the system with just glue and duct tape ;D

Errr.... not to nitpick, but have you tested this on Debian? On my Lenny system laptop-mode and pm-utils work very nicely together. Acpi-tools is uninstalled (the source of the hated power.sh script) and unecessary.

I'd like to correct my post above though, and say that it does not apply the correct settings when resuming from suspend on AC. Not asking for support, just wanted to chime in with the status of things in Debian.

[davarse]

hi mate i check my load circle load and i got this:

smartctl version 5.37 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Alle
n
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: WDC WD2500BEVS-22UST0
Serial Number: WD-WXEZ07W92272
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity: 250,059,350,016 bytes
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Wed Jul 16 17:43:57 2008 EST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: (8760) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off supp
ort.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 106) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_
FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always -
0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 188 188 021 Pre-fail Always -
1558
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
556
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always -
0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 100 253 051 Pre-fail Always -
0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always -
1412
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 051 Pre-fail Always -
0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 100 051 Old_age Always -
0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
540
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always -
374
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 175 175 000 Old_age Always -
76953
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 109 088 000 Old_age Always -
38
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always -
0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always -
0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 253 000 Old_age Offline -
0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always -
0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0009 100 253 051 Pre-fail Offline -
0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged. [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]


SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.



do you think i have to apply it???

cheers'

[Arthur Archnix]

Ok, I've gotten the correct hdparm settings to be applied after suspend. There's a discussion about this on the laptop-mode malling list for July. I'm not sure if this fix will work for Ubuntu, as there are apparently some problems with how Ubuntu has chosen to integrate laptop-mode according to its maintainer. I'm also not sure if Ubuntu has given the laptop-mode service the same name and place.

This script is only for those running Hardy and using PM-utils and laptop-mode. Try adding the following script to your users pm/sleep.d directory. On debian, that's /etc/pm/sleed.d/ however, it may be different on your system.

Create a file called 01-laptopmode-service and paste the following in there:

#!/bin/sh

. "${PM_FUNCTIONS}"

case "$1" in
   hibernate|suspend)
       ;;
   thaw|resume)
    invoke-rc.d laptop-mode restart
       ;;
   *) exit $NA
       ;;
esac

Make it executable, suspend, resume on ac power and then check with

hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep level

Again, I can't make any promises because I can't test this on Ubuntu. The instructions are intentionally a bit vague at the moment because I think that if you can't figure out how to do the steps not clearly spelled out you probably shouldn't try this until others have, and reported their results.

Best,

[Rui Pais]

Ok, I've gotten the correct hdparm settings to be applied after suspend. There's a discussion about this on the laptop-mode malling list for July. I'm not sure if this fix will work for Ubuntu, as there are apparently some problems with how Ubuntu has chosen to integrate laptop-mode according to its maintainer. I'm also not sure if Ubuntu has given the laptop-mode service the same name and place.

This script is only for those running Hardy and using PM-utils and laptop-mode. Try adding the following script to your users pm/sleep.d directory. On debian, that's /etc/pm/sleed.d/ however, it may be different on your system.

Create a file called 01-laptopmode-service and paste the following in there:

#!/bin/sh

. "${PM_FUNCTIONS}"

case "$1" in
   hibernate|suspend)
       ;;
   thaw|resume)
    invoke-rc.d laptop-mode restart
       ;;
   *) exit $NA
       ;;
esac

Make it executable, suspend, resume on ac power and then check with

hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep level

Again, I can't make any promises because I can't test this on Ubuntu. The instructions are intentionally a bit vague at the moment because I think that if you can't figure out how to do the steps not clearly spelled out you probably shouldn't try this until others have, and reported their results.

Best,

Hi.
I tried on Hardy (yes, the paths you mention are the same on Debian and ubuntu) but here it wont work.
It always wakes to "Advanced power management level: 128"

I didn't see what else, as extra steps you mention, would be needed. I just created the scrit on /etc/pm/sleed.d/ made it executable and suspended.


What i do, as a workaround, for this issue it's create a cron job for:

sudo /etc/acpi/resume.d/99-hdd-ugly-fix.sh

with a recurrence of 2 min, after add a

ALL=NOPASSWD: /etc/acpi/resume.d/99-hdd-ugly-fix.sh

to visudo.
Not a clean way, of course, but it works.

[Arthur Archnix]

Can you check in your pm log if the script was run successully?

If so, try passing the command to restart the service from the command line. Does it work?

[Rui Pais]

Can you check in your pm log if the script was run successully?

If so, try passing the command to restart the service from the command line. Does it work?

Hi again.
Yes, i checked and script run. Not sure of successfully:

===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:45 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00clear =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:45 WEST 2008: running hook: /etc/pm/sleep.d/01-laptopmode-service =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:45 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/05led =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:45 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/10NetworkManager =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:45 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/20video =====
kernel.acpi_video_flags = 0
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:45 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/49bluetooth =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:45 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/50modules =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:45 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:47 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:47 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:37:47 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video =====
Wed Jul 16 17:37:47 WEST 2008: done running suspend hooks.
Wed Jul 16 17:38:01 WEST 2008: running resume hooks.
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:01 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:01 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:01 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:01 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:02 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/50modules =====
* Reconfiguring network interfaces...
SIOCDELRT: No such process
...done.
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:02 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/49bluetooth =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:02 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/20video =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:02 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/10NetworkManager =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:02 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/05led =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:02 WEST 2008: running hook: /etc/pm/sleep.d/01-laptopmode-service =====
===== Wed Jul 16 17:38:02 WEST 2008: running hook: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00clear =====
Wed Jul 16 17:38:02 WEST 2008: done running resume hooks.

I run it from command line, passing argument suspend, and it changes nothing.

So i replaced the line

invoke-rc.d laptop-mode restart

by

/etc/acpi/resume.d/99-hdd-ugly-fix.sh

and that, finally make it work

Many thanks for point me to the /etc/pm/sleed.d/01-laptopmode-service!
It works much better then my previous solution of running a command each 2 minutes.

[Polygon]

Hi, im confused on determining if my laptop suffers from this problem or not, i ran the command once:

mark@Australis:~$ date; sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep '(Load_Cycle_Count|Temperature)'
Fri Jul 18 13:27:03 MST 2008
190 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 059 048 000 Old_age Always - 689700905
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 29616
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 134 100 000 Old_age Always - 41 (Lifetime Min/Max 22/52)

then 15 min later:

mark@Australis:~$ date; sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep '(Load_Cycle_Count|Temperature)'
Fri Jul 18 13:44:21 MST 2008
[sudo] password for mark:
190 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 059 048 000 Old_age Always - 706478121
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 29650
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 134 100 000 Old_age Always - 41 (Lifetime Min/Max 22/52)

then i ran it again about 3 hours later:

mark@Australis:~$ date; sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep '(Load_Cycle_Count|Temperature)'
Fri Jul 18 16:39:41 MST 2008
[sudo] password for mark:
190 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 053 048 000 Old_age Always - 790364207
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 097 097 000 Old_age Always - 30506
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 117 100 000 Old_age Always - 47 (Lifetime Min/Max 22/52)
mark@Australis:~$

do you think that im suffering from this problem? my laptop is a compaq presario f767nr and my hard drive according to lshw is a Hitachi HTS54252