Comment 447 for bug 59695

I don't think this is a general Linux problem. I had this under Windows XP too. It has something to do with the Advanced power management which seems to be set to 128 per default from the hard disk producer which lets the hard disk sleep after a short time. At least under Linux it is very easy with one line in /etc/rc.local to set the value to 255.
hdparm -B255 /dev/sda
I don't see the problem and it doesn't seem to kill the hard disk so fast otherwise much more people had huge problems and the producers wouldn't ship them with activated advanced power management.