Comments on: Laptop Hardrive Killer Bug – should get critical status

By: Idetrorce

Idetrorce — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:26:01 +0000

very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce

By: ubuntudemon

ubuntudemon — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:11:49 +0000

The bug :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695

More information :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3733762&postcount=1

The support thread :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=591503

By: Visitor792

Visitor792 — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 21:36:11 +0000

I have visited your site 587-times

By: ubuntudemon

ubuntudemon — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:16:35 +0000

I have combined all active threads about the “laptop harddrive Load_Cycle_Count issue” on the ubuntuforums.

People who have support questions can ask them here :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=591503

By: ubuntudemon

ubuntudemon — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:37:37 +0000

to Tech Roach:

It can’t hurt to check. But as far as I can tell these aggressive power management settings are most likely to happen for laptop BIOSes and firmwares of 2.5″ laptop drives (which might be inside external drive cages).

By: Tech Roach

Tech Roach — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:30:51 +0000

Dude, could this cause problems in my non-laptop PC hardware ?

By: ubuntudemon

ubuntudemon — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:48:04 +0000

The smartctl values aren’t always easy to interpret. If the Load_Cycle_Counter value behaves as a counter and is below impossible to reach values it’s probably the right number.

You can also look at “WORST” and “TRESHOLD” (|more instead of |grep to easily see which value is “WORST” and which value is “TRESHOLD”) :
$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | more

If WORST is lowering (too fast) than you might be suffering from this problem. You can roughly calculate how long it will take for WORST to reach TRESHOLD if you keep watching those values daily/weekly. The closer WORST (starts at 100 or 200 from what I have seen) is to THRESHOLD the likelier it is for your drive to die from a high Load_Cycle_Count.

From https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/17216/comments/40 :
[quote=Brian Visel]

Something to bear in mind as well:

smartmon does not always report SMART values as you might think. Different values are stored in different ways by different manufacturers.

Namely, if you do the smartctl check, wait for the click, and do it again immediately after, you may find that the amount has increased by more than one. In this case, it’s a pretty safe bet that the number you’re seeing isn’t accurate.

Also, it’s a pretty safe bet (though not guaranteed) that you can get the real value by dividing by the amount it increments by. So, if the value you see first is 477,296, and then it clicks once, and the value is 477,312 (difference of 16), it’s a pretty safe bet that the number you’re really dealing with is more along the lines of 29,831 to 29,832, in which case you have no worries.

[/quote]

If you think you might be suffering from this problem you might want to apply the ugly fix :
http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/laptop-hardrive-killer-bug/#comment-31234

If you think your harddrive might start dying soon you should make backups of all your data and run the diagnostic tool of your harddrive manufacturer.

By: ubuntudemon

ubuntudemon — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:21:19 +0000

I’m a big fan of Ubuntu. I don’t want to see Ubuntu hurt because it’s not Ubuntu who is setting these aggressive power management defaults.

Some background of the problem :

If your harddrive spins down and spins up again your Load_Cycle_Count increases by one. If your harddrive head parks and unparks again your Load_Cycle_Count increases by one.

You don’t want your Load_Cycle_Count to increase too fast.

Harddrive manufacturers seem to claim most harddrives can handle at least 600.000 Load_Cycles but this is probably an average under ideal circumstances. My harddrive started to die slowly when at a Load_Cycle_Count of 200.000.

Ubuntu is NOT causing aggressive power management.

The following things might instead cause aggressive power management settings :

* your (laptop) harddrive firmware might have aggressive power management defaults (operating system independent)
* your (laptop) BIOS might set your harddrive to use aggressive power management (operating system independent)
* you might have enabled laptop-mode in /etc/default/acpi-support (disabled by default) which will set your harddrive to use aggressive power management

These aggressive power management settings are set by your BIOS or harddrive firmware. Windows and/or Mac OS X might be overriding these settings which might make Ubuntu look bad if Ubuntu doesn’t override these settings.

Read here what Matthew Garret an experienced and well known Ubuntu Developer has said about this problem :
http://www.advogato.org/person/mjg59/diary/82.html

for more information see :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695
http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/ubuntu-is-not-causing-aggressive-power-management

If you think you might be suffering from this problem here’s an ugly fix :
the ugly fix

By: ubuntudemon

ubuntudemon — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:49:33 +0000

Ubuntu is NOT causing aggressive power management.

The following things might instead cause aggressive power management settings :

Read here what Matthew Garret an experienced and well known Ubuntu Developer has said about this problem :
http://www.advogato.org/person/mjg59/diary/82.html

for more information see :
http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/ubuntu-is-not-causing-aggressive-power-management/

By: ubuntudemon

ubuntudemon — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:03:05 +0000

to DoBeAClueBee:

Thanks for sharing your idea. Your crontab line has some small error somewhere though. Only the date gets added into the file on the desktop.