Great idea erythrocyte

I want to reply to
AndrewLuecke<http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/contributor/AndrewLuecke/>but
I don't have an user... I think that he's misleading the main issue
here. Yes, it's a "generic" bug, but Canonical: We need an official
statement on something that's very important because laptop market for SO is
also important... An also we need an fix for this, ok this is not "your"
problem, but it's happening on Ubuntu with laptops and it's critical to
assure market share in the future.



On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 2:51 PM, erythrocyte <email address hidden> wrote:

> @ Botond Szász
>
> thanks for agreeing with me on this. i've opened up a brainstorm page to
> get this going and would like to see other users who see an official
> statement from Canonical/Dell as crucial, cast their votes of support.
> The idea is #15153 "Canonical And Dell Should Issue Official Statement
> About Hard-Drive Killer Bug" at http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15153/
> .
>
> please do cast your votes today everyone!
>
> ..over and out
>
> ~
> erythrocyte
>
> --
> 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 direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The Dell Project: Confirmed
> Status in "acpi-support" source package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
> Status in "linux-meta" source package in Ubuntu: New
> Status in "pm-utils" source package in Ubuntu: New
> Status in acpi-support in Ubuntu Hardy: Triaged
> Status in linux-meta in Ubuntu Hardy: New
> Status in pm-utils in Ubuntu Hardy: New
> Status in "acpi-support" source package in Baltix: New
> Status in "acpi-support" source package in Debian: Fix Released
> Status in "pm-utils" source package in Fedora: Invalid
> Status in "laptop-mode-tools" source package in Mandriva: Confirmed
> Status in Suse Linux: Fix Released
>
> Bug description:
> This is not a support forum.  Please do not use it as such (even though it
> has been used as such already).
>
> You can scan through the bug for links to the Ubuntu forums where many,
> many different questions have been asked, answered, and re-answered.  The
> temporary workaround is just below.
>
> See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerManagement for an overview about what is
> involved and for a remedy.
>
>
> Following is a summary of the issue:
> It is confirmed that some systems are seeing an unusually high number of
> load/unload cycles on their hard disks, as evidenced by smartctl.
>
> It was originally surmised that this was related to laptop-mode being
> enabled, but this especially affects systems where laptop-mode is disabled.
>  In fact, aggressive APM is not a bad idea while a system is not on AC, as
> that system is much more likely to encounter a physical impact.
>
> This is due to disk APM settings that let the heads park or disk spin down
> after an idle period that is shorter than the regular disk access patterns
> of the OS.
>
> Then, the heads are only parked for a very short period of time and almost
> imediately loaded again. Making impact protection much ineffective and
> wearing out the drive.
>
> It can happen when the disk asumes aggressive APM settings (like many
> laptop disks) and the OS does not take care to set the APM settings
> accordingly to its current disk access pattern.
>
> This problem has been confirmed in Ubuntu as well as in other distributions
> and on MacOS X and Windows.
>
> Symptoms of this bug are:
> * Frequent HD clicks  -- more than one per 3 minutes while idle, louder
> than the typical access sounds.  Often more than twice per minute.  On some
> disks, the click is very quiet
> * Rapidly Increasing Load_Cycle_Count as displayed in the final number in
> "sudo smartctl -a /dev/hda | grep Load_Cycle_Count" (where /dev/hda is
> replaced with your own hard disk device)
> * Early hard disk failure  never stay parked, due to very frequent disk
> activity.  Thus this cycle occurs often, thus wearing out the drive, and any
> comparative benefit is negligible (whereas, if the-- some disks are cut down
> to less than a year of actual uptime.
>
> The problem is only present due to the existence of *all four* of the
> following factors:
> * Hardware is set (default or otherwise) to aggressive power management,
> causing heads to park.  (default behaviour of many drives and often the only
> user available type of power management)
> * Disk is touched often, causing heads to unpark. (default behaviour of
> many distributions)
> * Drives are spec'd to a limited number of these cycles.  (600,000 is the
> most common, although some may be spec'd higher or lower).
> * The OS not setting disk APM variables according to current disk access
> pattern.
>
> Reasonable Limits / Criteria for a fix:
> * There should be fewer than ~15 load cycles per hour, except during heavy
> usage while on battery.
> * This provides a life expectancy of over four years, which is reasonable
> for a hard disk.
>
> Temporary Workaround:
> * Follow the above link.
>
> Permanent Fix:
> * Obtain utility from your hard drive manufacturer to change the default
> head parking time if available.
> * Contrlolling the APM variables of hard drives according to the current
> disk access pattern. (i.e. chunked into blocks with minutes of idle time
> (disk-idleing or "laptop_mode") or continous disk access every x seconds
> expecting the disks to stay up all the time.)
>
> Some hardware with this issue:
> WD1200VE -- http://www.wdc.com/en/library/portable/2879-001121.pdf -- This
> aggressive parking is a feature of this disk, but that feature relies on
> behaviour that allows for significant amounts of (truly) idle time without
> the disk being touched. Notice the "Load/unload cycles" of 600,000.
>
> Example Load_Cycle_Counts:
> * Thinkpad Z60m/Hitachi HTS541080G9SA00 with well over 7000 load cycles in
> only 100 hours.  That's >70 per hour.
> * Gateway MT6451/Western Digital WD1200VE with 164762 load cycles in 3747
> hours (156 days) of uptime.  That's ~43 per hour -- except that the system
> was patched during the initial third of its life, which puts it at ~63/hour
> since Gutsy was installed (and wasn't patched, as I had done with feisty).
>
> 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.)
>
> You can get the average per hour by the following division:
> Load_Cycle_Count / Power_On_Hours
>
> Old workaround for 7.10 (not working in 8.04):
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695/comments/14
> A more extensive description of the workaround:
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=591503
>
> You may need to use '254', or a bit lower, as opposed to '255'.  If HD
> temperature gets high, you may want to set it all the way "down" to 200 or
> so.  ~1 click every 2.5-3 minutes is fine.
> Note:  Some disks are unresponsive to having their APM changed by hdparm,
> and therefore the workaround doesn't work.  It would be a good idea, in such
> cases, to disable APM in the BIOS if possible.
>
> See also http://paul.luon.net/journal/hacking/BrokenHDDs.html for a rather
> dramatic account of the effects the current default values may have.
>
>