** Description changed: - When switching to battery power, /etc/acpi/power.sh issues the command - hdparm -B 1 to all block devices. This leads to extremely frequent load - cycles. For example, my new thinkpad has already done well over 7000 - load cycles -- in only 100 hours. That's at least one unloading per - minute. Googling for "load unload cycles notebook OR laptop" shows that - most laptop drives handle up to 600,000 such cycles. As these values - clearly show, this issue is of high importance and should be fixed - sooner rather than later. + It is claimed that some systems are seeing an unusually high number of + load/unload cycles on their hard disks, as evidenced by smartctl. + + If laptop mode is enabled (which is NOT the default), then when + switching to battery power, /etc/acpi/power.sh issues the command hdparm + -B 1 to set IDE and SCSI disks to power saving mode, so enabling laptop + mode may be related to this observation. + + For example, my new thinkpad has already done well over 7000 load cycles + -- in only 100 hours. That's at least one unloading per minute. Googling + for "load unload cycles notebook OR laptop" shows that most laptop + drives handle up to 600,000 such cycles. Please see for yourself how often your drive is load cycling: smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sda (This command is for an SATA drive; you'll need to install the smartmontools package first.) See also http://paul.luon.net/journal/hacking/BrokenHDDs.html for a rather dramatic account of the effects the current default values may have. Just in case the load/unload timeout depends on the specific laptop or disk model, here are my system specifications: ThinkPad Z60m & Hitachi HTS541080G9SA00 disk (80GB)
-- default value in power.sh potentially kills laptop disks https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/59695 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
