** Description changed: + [Impact] + This issue has the potential to cause additional mechanical wear and tear on rotational hard drives by causing them to spin up and down more frequently than in previous Ubuntu releases. While the intent of a development change in the precise cycle was to allow drives to spin down sooner and stay spun down, in practice users report their drives spin back up quickly. Until this is resolved, an aggressive spin-down policy is dangerous for hardware and inappropriate. + + [Test Case] + 1. On a laptop with a rotational hard drive, unplug main power and run on battery. + 2. Run sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda|grep Load_Cycle_Count repeatedly, to observe that the count increases once every few seconds. + 3. Install hdparm from precise-proposed. + 4. Plug the laptop back into main power, then unplug it again. + 5. Run the command from step 2 again. Observe that the count is no longer increasing or is increasing much more slowly. (Note that the precise behavior will vary from hard drive to hard drive, and on some systems there will be no difference visible at all.) + + [Regression Potential] + For some users the current setting does not meaningfully increase wear and tear on their drives, but changing it will increase power consumption. This seems to be a necessary evil since there's no single power saving setting that works well for all drives. + + Hi, After update from Oneiric to Precise Beta 1, kernel 3.2.0-18-generic, I notice that, when on battery, my Dell XPS M1330 laptop has its HD spin down, then restart, very, very, very often, which means several times per minute. At this pace the HD won't live long, and this reminds to me a problem we had few years ago with "disk killers" linuxes that were unloading/reloading the HD heads much too often, killing disks in a couple of months. So I prefer to ring the alarm bell early... Upgrading from Oneiric to Precise I didn't change any power management parameter, but it definitely didn't do this before (and still doesn't do this on other distros I have on multiboot, so that's no hardware issue, only Precise does that on my machine...) ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04 Package: linux-image-3.2.0-18-generic 3.2.0-18.28 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-18.28-generic 3.2.9 Uname: Linux 3.2.0-18-generic i686 AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24. ApportVersion: 1.94.1-0ubuntu2 Architecture: i386 AudioDevicesInUse: - USER PID ACCESS COMMAND - /dev/snd/controlC0: michel 3044 F.... pulseaudio + USER PID ACCESS COMMAND + /dev/snd/controlC0: michel 3044 F.... pulseaudio CRDA: - country FR: - (2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20) - (5170 - 5250 @ 40), (N/A, 20) - (5250 - 5330 @ 40), (N/A, 20), DFS - (5490 - 5710 @ 40), (N/A, 27), DFS + country FR: + (2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20) + (5170 - 5250 @ 40), (N/A, 20) + (5250 - 5330 @ 40), (N/A, 20), DFS + (5490 - 5710 @ 40), (N/A, 27), DFS Card0.Amixer.info: - Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xf6dfc000 irq 46' - Mixer name : 'Silicon Image SiI1392 HDMI' - Components : 'HDA:83847616,1028020a,00100201 HDA:10951392,1028020a,00100000' - Controls : 33 - Simple ctrls : 19 + Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xf6dfc000 irq 46' + Mixer name : 'Silicon Image SiI1392 HDMI' + Components : 'HDA:83847616,1028020a,00100201 HDA:10951392,1028020a,00100000' + Controls : 33 + Simple ctrls : 19 CheckboxSubmission: 1ea6109db29b53f721a523a77b7f3abf CheckboxSystem: d00f84de8a555815fa1c4660280da308 Date: Sun Mar 11 22:25:00 2012 EcryptfsInUse: Yes HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=0e7ded16-c4fc-4f81-8562-3cb1196809d3 InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429) MachineType: Dell Inc. XPS M1330 ProcEnviron: - LANGUAGE=fr_FR:fr:en_US:en - TERM=xterm - PATH=(custom, user) - LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 - SHELL=/bin/bash + LANGUAGE=fr_FR:fr:en_US:en + TERM=xterm + PATH=(custom, user) + LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 + SHELL=/bin/bash ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.2.0-18-generic root=/dev/mapper/VG1-UBUNTU ro clocksource=hpet quiet splash vt.handoff=7 RelatedPackageVersions: - linux-restricted-modules-3.2.0-18-generic N/A - linux-backports-modules-3.2.0-18-generic N/A - linux-firmware 1.71 + linux-restricted-modules-3.2.0-18-generic N/A + linux-backports-modules-3.2.0-18-generic N/A + linux-firmware 1.71 SourcePackage: linux UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-03-10 (1 days ago) dmi.bios.date: 12/26/2008 dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.bios.version: A15 dmi.board.name: 0N6705 dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.chassis.type: 8 dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA15:bd12/26/2008:svnDellInc.:pnXPSM1330:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0N6705:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr: dmi.product.name: XPS M1330 dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
-- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/952556 Title: [Precise] [Hardware-killer] HD restarts every few seconds To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hdparm/+bug/952556/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
