Re: frequent disk head unloads under Linux: additional hardware

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

Pascal Vandeputte wrote:
> Tejun Heo wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Pascal Vandeputte wrote:
>>   
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I've been highly frustrated for more than a year about this problem with
>>> my HP nx7400 laptop and its Seagate Momentus 5400.2 disk (which is
>>> otherwise a really fine piece of equipment). By switching from Ubuntu to
>>> openSUSE today, I had to look for the Suse way of fixing this up
>>> (instead of editing /etc/hdparm.conf on Ubuntu), and I stumbled upon the
>>> storage-fixup script which is really nice!
>>>
>>> As my harddisk isn't included in by default yet, I've attached the
>>> required information to this e-mail.
>>>
>>> Adding this to /etc/storage-fixup.conf solves it:
>>>
>>>    # Reported drive model: ST9100824AS
>>>    rule hp-nx7400
>>>    dmi system-manufacturer Hewlett-Packard
>>>    dmi system-product-name HP Compaq nx7400*
>>>    ata model ST9*AS
>>>    act hdparm -B 255 $DEV
>>>     
>> How much does the Load_Cycle_Count increase under idle usage per hour
>> without the adjustment?
>>   
> About thrice per minute:
> 
> # while : ; do smartctl --all /dev/sda | grep ^193; sleep 60; done
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   037   037   000    Old_age  
> Always       -       126856
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   037   037   000    Old_age  
> Always       -       126859
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   037   037   000    Old_age  
> Always       -       126862
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   037   037   000    Old_age  
> Always       -       126865
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   037   037   000    Old_age  
> Always       -       126867
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   037   037   000    Old_age  
> Always       -       126869
> 
> I reached the first 120000 cycles within 10 months of moderate usage
> (it's my personal laptop, not used for my day job).
> 
> It occurs in Windows XP as well, but not as frequently.
> 
>>> An unfortunate side-effect of meddling with the power saving on my
>>> system occurs at shutdown: for some reason I can clearly hear the drive
>>> spin down and then suddenly spin up and initialize again before the
>>> power is killed... This doesn't happen if I leave everything at default
>>> settings. Restoring the default setting (128) manually before shutting
>>> down doesn't prevent this either. It's weird and I've been working
>>> around it by rebooting and using the power button when I see GRUB appear.
>>>     
>> That's a known problem of certain HP laptops.  Please take a look at the
>> following bug report.
>>
>>   http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8855
>>
>> Thanks.
>>   
> Thanks for the pointer, I have already submitted my own data in that
> topic in the mean time. I hope that someday I can install the latest
> distro without worrying about hdparm tweaks :-)
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Pascal
added

-- 
tejun