hard drive clicking cry for help
This Slashdot article warns that a default setting may be dramatically shortening the life of your laptop's hard drive due to an aggressive power-saving feature / acpi bug / OS configuration.
If the load cycling count has a high value, compared to the expected life time of the hard drive and the expected maximum load cycle count, then your hard drive might be affected too.
burrow:/home/matt# smartctl -d ata -a /dev/hda
smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: TOSHIBA MK6008GAH
Serial Number: X639W9EGW
Firmware Version: BU011A
User Capacity: 60,011,642,880 bytes
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: 6
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Fri Nov 2 20:16:46 2007 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 387) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 76) minutes.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 100 100 001 Pre-fail Always - 1817
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 707
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 986
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0033 114 100 030 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 344
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 10
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 7364
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 40 (Lifetime Min/Max 9/46)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
220 Disk_Shift 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 8231
222 Loaded_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 893
223 Load_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
224 Load_Friction 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
226 Load-in_Time 0x0026 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 196
240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0001 100 100 001 Pre-fail Offline - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 967 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 681 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 679 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 419 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 280 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 188 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 182 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 164 -
# 9 Short offline Completed without error 00% 111 -
#10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 100 -
#11 Short offline Completed without error 00% 98 -
#12 Short offline Completed without error 00% 82 -
#13 Short offline Completed without error 00% 43 -
#14 Short offline Completed without error 00% 40 -
#15 Short offline Completed without error 00% 33 -
#16 Short offline Completed without error 00% 31 -
#17 Short offline Completed without error 00% 29 -
#18 Short offline Completed without error 00% 0 -
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
On my Dell Latitude D420, changing the apm setting alone didn't improve the situation, while changing both apm and spindown_time resolved the issue:
/dev/sda {
apm = 255
spindown_time = 0
}
- Matteo Vescovi's blog
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