laptop harddrive Load_Cycle_Count issue

[Arthur Archnix]

For most disks the default is 128 which is important to have while on battery (protection from bumps,less heat,less power) compared to a higher value.... In most cases it is unwise to use a different value than 128 while on battery.

In that case Demon, you should confirm the finer points of the SUSE fix you're recommending. They appear to use a setting of 200 while on battery. Perhaps a rewrite with sudo appropriate commands and your recommended battery settings?

If you do use a setting of 200, as opposed to 128. And you check using Level instead of just Advanced Power Management, then the following strange problem appears with the SUSE fix:

After resuming from suspend, if you are on AC power, incorrect settings are applied. 128 is applied. If you resume while on battery, the correct settings are applied (e.g., I have battery set to 200, and that is applied to the disk correctly). After resuming from suspend on AC and finding that the wrong settings are applied, everything works as it should regarding power changes. So, if you switch to battery power the correct settings will be applied. And if you switch to battery then AC quickly, the correct AC settings are applied.

Some people have "confirmed" that settings are not restored after suspend. Can you please confirm that this is only while on AC, and that it works fine resuming from battery. Also, does switching power sources apply the correct settings? Eg., fix it. Remember to use the command I gave above instead of the command on the SUSE page, and you may also need to temporarily change your Battery setting to 200 just to see the difference more clearly. After your "experiment", please remember to restore it to whatever default battery setting you've chosen.

PS. I'm on one of those cursed machines that mysteriously hang when using laptopmode. So I'm a little more limited in terms of what solutions I can try.

PPS. I've edited the Suse Fix to save you some work Demon. If you choose to go that way. The only changes are the use of sudo, renaming the script with a sh extension, and setting battery to 128.

And I tried editing my own configuration file to see if playing with the 255 254 values would help with my resume from suspend problem and it did not.

[barbarian]

thank you a lot guys, me just going to install kubuntu on Dell XPS m1330..

[Kestol]

Well... I really hope people can help me out here.. Got some questions...

1. If i put my powermangement to 254 while on AC, do i get any benefits besides the lower parking count?

2. If i want to achieve a parking count of 5-15 per hour while on AC, what should i try to add? Since 254-255 disables it tottally... And i think 5-15 parkings per hour sounds save for smaller bumps.
And does a count lower then 254/255 have any negative effects?

3. With bumps, do you mean smaller things like an elbow accidently hitting the laptop.. Or do it have to be bigger impacts?

4. Is a HD tempature from 40-45 alright while idle?

That's all for now...
Hope really people can help me,... I'll definatly be gratefull

[hotweiss]

Well... I really hope people can help me out here.. Got some questions...

1. If i put my powermangement to 254 while on AC, do i get any benefits besides the lower parking count?

2. If i want to achieve a parking count of 5-15 per hour while on AC, what should i try to add? Since 254-255 disables it tottally... And i think 5-15 parkings per hour sounds save for smaller bumps.
And does a count lower then 254/255 have any negative effects?

3. With bumps, do you mean smaller things like an elbow accidently hitting the laptop.. Or do it have to be bigger impacts?

4. Is a HD tempature from 40-45 alright while idle?

That's all for now...
Hope really people can help me,... I'll definatly be gratefull

I don't understand how the power management parking can protect the hard drive from damage caused by bumps. This sort of protection can only be achieved with a shock sensor. I had a shock sensor in my old Toshiba but I disabled it due to the fact that ever little movement would cause my drive to park, thus slowing down my computer. The glitch that we are discussing here causes the hard drive to park randomly and then immediately to restart.

[frodon]

When the heads are parked they are not close to the disk making thus the disk is more protected against bump as the heads has really few chance to hit the disk. However there are others way how bumps can damage a drive and head parking won't help on this.

[Kestol]

Well thx for the comment on my post... But i would really apreciate a answer for all 4 questions

Well... I really hope people can help me out here.. Got some questions...

1. If i put my powermangement to 254 while on AC, do i get any benefits besides the lower parking count?

2. If i want to achieve a parking count of 5-15 per hour while on AC, what should i try to add? Since 254-255 disables it tottally... And i think 5-15 parkings per hour sounds save for smaller bumps.
And does a count lower then 254/255 have any negative effects?

3. With bumps, do you mean smaller things like an elbow accidently hitting the laptop.. Or do it have to be bigger impacts?

4. Is a HD tempature from 40-45 alright while idle?

That's all for now...
Hope really people can help me,... I'll definatly be gratefull

[ubuntu_demon]

I'm not sure of the significance of the temperature... it's still below the maximum by a large margin. I installed sensors-applet and hddtemp (run as daemon), which shows my hdd temperature on my gnome menu bar which I find quite handy for monitoring it.

Running hddtemp as a deaemon is not a good idea because hddtemp causes unnecessary disk activity itself which can cause an increase in Load_Cycle_Count. See :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...mp/+bug/160621

I can get the temperature without an increase of Load_Cycle_Count with my harddisk in the following way :
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep emperature

[ubuntu_demon]

I updated the post which explains the unofficial ugly fix for Hardy regarding suspend/resume :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...47&postcount=3

[BandD]

Well... I really hope people can help me out here.. Got some questions...

1. If i put my powermangement to 254 while on AC, do i get any benefits besides the lower parking count?

2. If i want to achieve a parking count of 5-15 per hour while on AC, what should i try to add? Since 254-255 disables it tottally... And i think 5-15 parkings per hour sounds save for smaller bumps.
And does a count lower then 254/255 have any negative effects?

3. With bumps, do you mean smaller things like an elbow accidently hitting the laptop.. Or do it have to be bigger impacts?

4. Is a HD tempature from 40-45 alright while idle?

That's all for now...
Hope really people can help me,... I'll definatly be gratefull

1. You could see slightly lower HD temps. Which is always good.

2. You can try any value between 124 and 255. Different HD manufacturers assign different values for different behaviors, so you'll have to experiment a little.

3. Probably bigger impacts, though I suppose it depends on how hard you hit it with your elbow. The heads float above the actual disk via a magnetic field, so it has to be powerful enough to break that field.

4. Most drives' higher range operating temperature is some where around 50 C. So an idle temp of 45 is perhaps a little warm, but still within the 'normal' bounds.

[frodon]

Seagate disks are in general made for a maximum temperature of 60C, after an hour of use my hdd temp has always been around 45-47C this without and without head parking, i guess it mainly depends on how good is your laptop cooling system.