Good info! It shouldn't be too difficult to include a script that monitors the system for the bug, to be run by cron, then notifies the user, providing an option to automatically disable power management on the disk if so. I could do that. Is there a way I could get it published, if I did make such a script?
On Thu, 2008-05-01 at 06:58 +0000, Chris Cheney wrote: > This is most definitely a "bug" in the hard drive firmware settings in > how quickly it parks the head after being idle. It affects MacOS X and > Windows users along with Linux users in general not just Ubuntu. I have > found posts on other sites referencing the problems for their users as > well. The only thing those users were able to do about fixing the > problem was to turn off the power management completely by doing the > equivalent of hdparm -B 254 (setting the register to 0xFE). I have > included links below referencing the problem showing up on the other > OSes. > > Completely disabling power management however will cause the head never > to park and if the system is jolted could potentially cause the hard > drive heads to crash into the platter. So 'fixing' this across the board > by disabling head parking altogether is not really a good solution > either. > > Probably the only reason some users don't see this behavior under > Windows but do under Linux is that their Windows install probably never > allows the drive to be idle enough to park the head. This was the case > on my machine before I cleaned off the OEM install which had lots of > bloatware on it and reinstalled Vista from scratch, it would never stop > writing to the disk. Which would also mean if the drive is jolted too > hard it would crash as well. So no Windows doesn't have this problem > 'fixed'. > > My post on ubuntuforums.org about it: > http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4830919 > > MacOS X: > http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7055342 > > Windows: > http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=191167 > > So the ball is in the manufacturer's court in that they need to adjust > the head parking idle time to something more sensible, or at least > provide utilities that can allow the user to tweak the setting. Hitachi > for one does not provide this ability. > -- High frequency of load/unload cycles on some hard disks may shorten lifetime https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/59695 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
