Very Important Note: Do NOT confuse spin-down with head-parking (aka
IntelliPark/SmartPark on Western Digital drives -- and not only greens)
Start_Stop_Count = disk spin-ups count
Load_Cycle_Count = r/w head unpark
Example: On my WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT (rated for 600,000 Load Cycles),
which had idle3 in its firmware modified from default 8sec to 150sec
(2.5min) using `idle3ctl` (apt-get install idle3-tools, or use WD's
wdidle3 tool in DOS!), I'm parking at an acceptable rate with the
default PM level of 128, when on battery, without spin-downs, just as I
wanted.
# hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
Advanced power management level: 128
* Advanced Power Management feature set
# hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep -i standby
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
Therefore, it is my conclusion that there are only 2 options to stop the
affected drives from parking themselves silly:
1. (Confirmed) On Western Digital Drives, increase idle3 timer in the drive's
firmware from the default 8-sec to at least 120sec (2minutes), or 180sec
(3minutes) to be safe.
or
2. (Untested) Disable the drive's APM altoghther, with -B 254. Per hdparm's
manpage:
"The highest degree of power management is attained with a setting of 1, and
the highest I/O performance with a setting of 254. A value of 255 tells hdparm
to disable Advanced Power Management altogether on the drive (not all drives
support disabling it, but most do)."
For more details on acceptable Load_Cycle_Count rates (which *should* be much
higher than Start_Stop_Count rate), see:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hdparm/+bug/952556/comments/77
On a relevant note, if you want spin-downs as well (-B 127 or lower), make sure
to specify a sensible spin-down timeout (-S 36 at minimum -- 3 min), per this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hdparm/+bug/952556/comments/29
Obviously, if you don't want spin-downs and are content with -B 128 (or
higher), there's no need to specify -S timeout. It has nothing to do
with head-parking rate, AFAIK.
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/969165
Title:
hdparm: excessive Load_Cycle_Count with some WD "Intelli-Park" HDDs
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