laptop harddrive Load_Cycle_Count issue

**victorgreen** · May 4th, 2009

Hey Hated on Mostly, Im trying your suggestion, Im running Jaunty 64 on a Thinkpad X61 with 320gb WD 5400rpm drive; everytime i upgrade OS version I have to go through this mess of dealing with spindwon [this isnt the drive that came wiht the laptop, that one blew out in 1.5years]

i hope it works, but this drive seems to like totally disabling PM on HDD (255) than 254

**BandD** · May 5th, 2009

Originally Posted by yesint

I suspect that this depends on the hard drive model heavily. It seems that the only way to find out is to try.

I suffered badly in Gutsy and Hardy with this problem on this drive. So Jaunty is a blessing!

**xieu90** · May 8th, 2009

Originally Posted by BandD

I suffered badly in Gutsy and Hardy with this problem on this drive. So Jaunty is a blessing!

hi bandd,
why is jaunty a blessing ?
did the problem disappear ? can you tell me which filesystem did you choose ?
ext3 or ext4 ? did you have to use ugly fix ?

**victorgreen** · May 8th, 2009

Im very interested as well. My problems with Jaunty may be from the fact that I upgraded and didnt fresh install, not not using an ext filesystem.

**kung fu buntu** · May 9th, 2009

On my desktop system I have 4 HDD and running

Code:

smartctl -a /dev/sdX | grep Load_Cycle_Count

only shows results for 1 of them.

How can I get the load cycle values for the other HDD?

I have run smartctl tests on the disks and they look fine but you can never be too sure (I've read that only 60% of the disks that failed have given warning signs through SMART).

BTW, this issue seems to still be present with newer hard disks (and it doesn't seem to be ubuntu related per se, but instead with the hard disk and kernel):
http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?t=1554
Be wary of WD Green Power disks.

**kung fu buntu** · May 18th, 2009

Any comments on this?
Any way to see the load cycle values for the other HDD?

**Alfred_McGee** · May 24th, 2009

The Load_Cycle_Count issue has been a problem for me since the Gutsy days. I kinda thought that it would be fixed in Jaunty, but oh well, the fix at the beginning of this thread, though "ugly," is still effective, except when resuming from suspend. In that case, switching from AC to battery power, or vice versa, always works to bring my load cycle count back under control.

EDIT: New in Jaunty: resume from suspend no longer disables the fix posted at the start of this thread- at least not when you've got AC power on.

**BandD** · May 24th, 2009

Originally Posted by xieu90

hi bandd,
why is jaunty a blessing ?
did the problem disappear ? can you tell me which filesystem did you choose ?
ext3 or ext4 ? did you have to use ugly fix ?

For me, in Jaunty, while on AC power my drive heads don't park ever. When on battery power, they do park--relatively often. This is what I expect and it was a pleasant surprise for me to find this behavior out of the box in Jaunty--no ugly fix required!

I chose to stick with the tried and true ext3.

**BandD** · May 24th, 2009

Originally Posted by kung fu buntu

On my desktop system I have 4 HDD and running

Code:

smartctl -a /dev/sdX | grep Load_Cycle_Count

only shows results for 1 of them.

How can I get the load cycle values for the other HDD?

I have run smartctl tests on the disks and they look fine but you can never be too sure (I've read that only 60% of the disks that failed have given warning signs through SMART).

BTW, this issue seems to still be present with newer hard disks (and it doesn't seem to be ubuntu related per se, but instead with the hard disk and kernel):
http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?t=1554
Be wary of WD Green Power disks.

I would imagine that you would have to run the smartctl -a command for each drive individually (i.e. if you have drives sda, sdb, sdc, and sdd, then you'd have to run sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda, and then run sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb, then run sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc, then run sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdd).

It's possible that these drives don't support SMART values (I'm assuming this is a desktop). In general desktop drives don't ship with any power saving features because there is really no need for them (you don't have to worry about draining a battery!). In which case there is load_cycle_count because head parking isn't something the drives are even capable of.

**xieu90** · May 26th, 2009

hi , i typed installed and run codes like this
ace@ace-laptop ~ $ sudo apt-get install hdparm
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
hdparm is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 66 not upgraded.
ace@ace-laptop ~ $ sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
ace@ace-laptop ~ $ sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
ace@ace-laptop ~ $ sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda3

/dev/sda3:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
ace@ace-laptop ~ $ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | egrep '(Load_Cycle_Count|Temperature)'
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 22620
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 144 144 000 Old_age Always - 38 (Lifetime Min/Max 8/45)
ace@ace-laptop ~ $

so will it be ok from now on ?
what does 192 infront of Load cycle count mean ?
and is my hdd set to 254 ?