hard drive never spins down

[Mike Greenly]

Binary package hint: laptop-mode-tools

My laptop never spins down the hard drive no matter if it's on battery power or not.

I have not altered /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf

Manually running "hdparm -B 1 -S 12 /dev/sda" which matches the default settings in /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf seems to work except that it produces excessive head parks/unparks (approximately a dozen before spinning down) but the drive does spin down after 1 minute with no activity.

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.10
Release: 8.10

apt-cache policy laptop-mode-tools
laptop-mode-tools:
  Installed: 1.45-1ubuntu4
  Candidate: 1.45-1ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 1.45-1ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

hdparm -I /dev/sda

        /dev/sda:

        ATA device, with non-removable media
         Model Number: ST9120823AS
         Serial Number: 5NJ00K8K
         Firmware Revision: 3.ADB
        Standards:
         Supported: 7 6 5 4
         Likely used: 8
        Configuration:
         Logical max current
         cylinders 16383 16383
         heads 16 16
         sectors/track 63 63
         --
         CHS current addressable sectors: 16514064
         LBA user addressable sectors: 234441648
         LBA48 user addressable sectors: 234441648
         device size with M = 1024*1024: 114473 MBytes
         device size with M = 1000*1000: 120034 MBytes (120 GB)
        Capabilities:
         LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
         Queue depth: 32
         Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
         R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 8
         Advanced power management level: 254
         Recommended acoustic management value: 208, current value: 254
         DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
              Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
         PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
              Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120ns
        Commands/features:
         Enabled Supported:
            * SMART feature set
              Security Mode feature set
            * Power Management feature set
            * Write cache
            * Look-ahead
            * Host Protected Area feature set
            * WRITE_BUFFER command
            * READ_BUFFER command
            * NOP cmd
            * DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
            * Advanced Power Management feature set
              SET_MAX security extension
            * Automatic Acoustic Management feature set
            * 48-bit Address feature set
            * Device Configuration Overlay feature set
            * Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
            * FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
            * SMART error logging
            * SMART self-test
            * IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD
            * SATA-I signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
            * SATA-II signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
            * Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
            * Host-initiated interface power management
            * Phy event counters
              Device-initiated interface power management
            * Software settings preservation
            * SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
            * SCT LBA Segment Access (AC2)
            * SCT Features Control (AC4)
            * SCT Data Tables (AC5)
        Security:
         Master password revision code = 65534
          supported
         not enabled
         not locked
          frozen
         not expired: security count
         not supported: enhanced erase
        Checksum: correct

[Mike Greenly (mgreenly)]

After much experimenting it's become clear that the problem exists because of conflicts in the acpi-support scripts and laptop-mode-tools. Removing acpi-support will allow laptop-mode-tools to behave as expected. Of course isn't a practical option.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.
You might not have noticed, but laptop_mode is disabled by default in /etc/default/acpi-support. So if you remove acpi-support it will work. But changing this setting in /etc/default/acpi-support would be better:

# Switch to laptop-mode on battery power - off by default as it causes odd
# hangs on some machines. (Note: This is reported to cause breakage in
# Debian - see deb bug #425800. Leaving enabled for Ubuntu for now
# since presumably it's still valid here.)
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=false

if you set this to true, laptop_mode will work. But remember that using laptop_mode can result in data loss since the hard drive is spun down and changes aren't saved.