Arch Linux

cb474

Member

Registered: 2009-04-04

Posts: 469

With Kernel 2.6.31 Can't Spin Down Hard Drive

I'm having a problem I have no idea how to troubleshoot.

I have two hard drives in my laptop, one of which I almost never use (it's in the ultrabay on my thinkpad). So I setup laptop-mode to spin the drive down (put it in standby mode) after a short period of time. After I upgrade to kernel 2.6.31.3-1 this no longer works. As soon as the drive spins down, it spins right back up. This also happens if I force the drive to spin down with "hdparm -y /dev/sda". I've also noticed that I can hear the system constantly accessing the drive, about every ten seconds, even though I'm doing nothing with it (it's just for data storage) and not even doing anything on my computer.

Any thoughts? I don't know for sure that this is because of the kernel upgrade, but the problem started immediately after I did the upgrade. I want the drive to spin down becaues it uses power and makes a fair amount of noise and it's really annoying now to have the system constantly accessing it for no reason.

Thanks.

[Edit: If I unmout the partition I'm using on this drive, then I can spin it down. But this is obviously not a very practical solution.]

Last edited by cb474 (2009-10-13 08:53:13)

1LordAnubis

Member

Registered: 2008-10-10

Posts: 253

Website

Re: With Kernel 2.6.31 Can't Spin Down Hard Drive

This is a little off topic (sorry, I don't know the solution here), but if you're using a laptop, wouldn't it be better to spin down as little as possible so the drive doesn't go bad from aggressive apm settings?

Instructions: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lap … wn_problem

I thought this was interesting:

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.

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Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
-Benjamin Franklin
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw

cb474

Member

Registered: 2009-04-04

Posts: 469

Re: With Kernel 2.6.31 Can't Spin Down Hard Drive

Thanks for the suggestion. I've already taken this issue into consideration with my settings.

Anyone have any thoughts about how to trouble shoot this problem? How to figure out why the hard drive is spinning up when I'm not using it, given that it's just for storage and has no system files on it?

cb474

Member

Registered: 2009-04-04

Posts: 469

Re: With Kernel 2.6.31 Can't Spin Down Hard Drive

So kernel 2.6.31.4-1 that came out today did not solve the problem for me. But downgrading my kernel to 2.6.30 solved the problem. I'd still like to trouble shoot it in 2.6.31, if anyone can advise me how to do this, although it seems like it has so many problems maybe I should just wait for 2.6.32.