laptop harddrive Load_Cycle_Count issue

[BandD]

Hi Polygon,

Your laod_cycles are increasing pretty fast. However, some drives report the load_cycle count strangely (i.e. for one cycle the value changes by 3 or 5). So the best thing to do is note your load_cycle count then as soon as you here a little click from your drive check the smartctl command again and see how much your load_cycle count increases by.

[Polygon]

i listened and every time i hear my hard drive make noise i checked it, and its going up by one each time =/

ill try some of these methods

[Polygon]

i dont think the hardy fix is working, i followed the instructions in the opensuse guide and used ubuntu_demons's numbers but its still showing * power management set even if i set it to false..

the config.d/disk script:

# Configure disk power management settings to ensure both
# long disk life and good power management.
#
# Space delimited list of disk devices this affects.
#
DEVICES_DISK_PM_NAMES="/dev/sda"
#
#
# Power management modes
#
# Powersave mode off
#  Disable APM and spin-down
#
DEVICES_DISK_PM_POWERSAVE_OFF="hdparm -q -B 254 -q -S 0"
#
# Powersave mode on
# Enable APM to conservative 200 and set spin-down for 21 minutes
#
DEVICES_DISK_PM_POWERSAVE_ON="hdparm -q -B 128 -q -S 0"

the power.d/disk script:

#!/bin/bash
. /usr/lib/pm-utils/functions
. /etc/pm/config.d/disk

if test -z "${DEVICES_DISK_PM_NAMES}"; then
        exit 1
fi

case "$1" in
        true)
                echo "**enabled pm for harddisk"
                for DISK_NAME in `echo ${DEVICES_DISK_PM_NAMES}`; do
                        ${DEVICES_DISK_PM_POWERSAVE_ON} ${DISK_NAME}
                done ;;
        false)
                echo "**disabled pm for harddisk"
                for DISK_NAME in `echo ${DEVICES_DISK_PM_NAMES}`; do
                        ${DEVICES_DISK_PM_POWERSAVE_OFF} ${DISK_NAME}
                done ;;
esac

and the power.d/disk script is executable:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 602 2008-07-19 11:40 /etc/pm/power.d/disk

but even after all that, if i try and disable powermanagement it still says its on:

mark@Australis:~$ sudo pm-powersave false
**disabled pm for harddisk
**SetLowPower OFF
**sched policy powersave OFF
mark@Australis:~$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep 'Advanced Power'
* Advanced Power Management feature set
mark@Australis:~$

[olskar]

Does not work for me either

[cnolanAU]

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.

I just found this site also, tried it out and it worked flawlessly, so came back here to see if it'd been mentioned. The solution on the wiki does appear to be cleaner.

[Polygon]

ill try that way in the wiki...is there any way to test that it works?

edit: it seems to not work, i went up 5 load cycles in 8 minutes.

EDIT: forget it, i'm just going to have to put vista back on this laptop. I don't want to, but i NEED this laptop to last as long as it can and this bug (wherever it lies) has already taken 30,000 out of the magic 60,000 and my laptop is not even a month old.

hopefully this bug will be fixed in future releases =/

[I_can_see_the_light]

ill try that way in the wiki...is there any way to test that it works?

edit: it seems to not work, i went up 5 load cycles in 8 minutes.

EDIT: forget it, i'm just going to have to put vista back on this laptop. I don't want to, but i NEED this laptop to last as long as it can and this bug (wherever it lies) has already taken 30,000 out of the magic 60,000 and my laptop is not even a month old.

hopefully this bug will be fixed in future releases =/

Your drive is probably rated for 600,000 cycles, not 60,000

Anyway, did you enable LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC in laptop-mode.conf? That's what I did and I also changed the HDD spin down value to 60 seconds when on AC

[frodon]

Don't mix laptop_mode and pm-util they don't play well together.

I used the laptop mode way in gutsy but swiched to the pm-util way with hardy for 2 reasons :
1- The fix with laptop_mode were less efficient for me under hardy.
2- Laptop_mode will be dumped soon in favor of pm-util so it's rather an unmaintained tool in the ubuntu scope.

[phend-one]

Just how serious is this issue? I want to put ubuntu on my laptop (LG R500) but I am worried about this Load_Cycle_Count killing the HDD.

[frodon]

It is serious to fix it if you have the issue, maybe you're already having this on your windows install. At least with ubuntu you will know how to fix it.

It will take you 10 minutes to takes 2 samples and identify if you have the issue and 5 more minutes to aplly the fix. So it will cost you around 15 minutes, this is acceptable IMO.