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#51 2008-06-21 12:40:11

Ikarus
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2007-07-05
Posts: 41

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

I got the following on an 1 year old Sony Vaio C2Z with a TOSHIBA MK1234GSX (120Gb)

Power_On_Hours          0x0032   094   094   000    Old_age   Always       -       2749
Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   093   093   000    Old_age   Always       -       78525

Advanced power management level: 128

Looking good  smile

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#52 2008-06-26 02:48:54

alexertech
Member
From: Mérida, Venezuela
Registered: 2008-05-18
Posts: 23
Website

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Well here is the status of my HD WD Scorpio with One Month of use, at 12 hours per day....

[root@antares ~]# smartctl -A /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.37 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
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     0x000f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   191   188   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       1450
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       380
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   196   196   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       26
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   100   253   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       530
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012   100   100   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       375
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       373
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   199   199   000    Old_age   Always       -       4769
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   122   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       25
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   196   196   000    Old_age   Always       -       4
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0009   100   253   051    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0

lloeki, where can i see the "acoustic management", do know which value has now.

The Load_Cycle_Count at 199 works fine, but the hard drive gets really noisy, something that doesnt happen in M$.... if i put 254, it gets very hot... So... !!! i dont know sad


"Any question has two points of view: the wrong one and ours."
www.alexertech.com

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#53 2008-06-26 09:44:14

lloeki
Member
From: France
Registered: 2007-02-20
Posts: 456
Website

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

hdparm -Ii /dev/sda |grep -i -e  acoustic -e 'advanced power'

Last edited by lloeki (2008-06-26 09:44:23)


To know recursion, you must first know recursion.

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#54 2008-10-19 17:30:53

ippo76
Member
From: PL
Registered: 2008-10-05
Posts: 5

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Hi Archers,
what is difference between hdparm -S and hdparm -B??

My laptop-mode.conf is:

 # Idle timeout values. (hdparm -S)
# Default is 2 hours on AC (NOLM_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=7200) and 20 seconds
# for battery and for AC with laptop mode on.
#
LM_AC_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=600
LM_BATT_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=20
NOLM_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=600

# Power management for HD (hdparm -B values)
#
BATT_HD_POWERMGMT=128
LM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=254
NOLM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=254

It`s ok - mostly I work on LM_AC but I`d like to know why....

Last edited by ippo76 (2008-10-19 17:32:39)

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#55 2008-10-25 09:48:59

mamr
Member
Registered: 2008-08-16
Posts: 63

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Hi,
I configured my laptop-mode.conf like this:

CONTROL_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT=1

LM_AC_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=300
LM_BATT_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=300
NOLM_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=7200

CONTROL_HD_POWERMGMT=1

BATT_HD_POWERMGMT=254
LM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=255
NOLM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=255

Additionally my start values for laptop-mode:

ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_BATTERY=1

ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC=0

ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_WHEN_LID_CLOSED=0

When I now do "hdparm -I /dev/sda" it tells me:

Capabilities:                                                       
        LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)                                 
        Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
        R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16  Current = 16                
        Advanced power management level: 128                                
        Recommended acoustic management value: 254, current value: 254      
        DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5         
             Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns                        
        PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4                                       
             Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns

The daemon 'laptop-mode' is running and I'm on AC right now. Why does the value not change from 128 to 255? Do I have to set 'ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC=0' to 'ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC=1' in order to let laptop-mode take control?

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#56 2008-10-25 12:20:03

creslin
Member
Registered: 2008-10-04
Posts: 241

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Since you're not changing the spindown dynamically, why not just put hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda in your rc.local and resume scripts?  As far as laptop-mode goes, I don't use it but your guess about ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC sounds good to me.


ARCH|awesome3.0 powered by Pentium M 750 | 512MB DDR2-533 | Radeon X300 M
The journey is the reward.

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#57 2008-10-25 14:22:21

stojic
Member
From: Zagreb, Croatia
Registered: 2008-02-24
Posts: 51

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Here's info from my laptop drive (almost 2 years old, constantly on):

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0012   065   065   000    Old_age   Always       -       15636
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0012   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       1188005

So, at Load_Cycle_Count of over one million and total working time of 651 days my hard drive should have died already, and should be approaching its second death tongue. Also, the VALUE being 001 with THRESH 000 seems to suggest that hard drive death is imminent. However, there are no errors and no problems whatsoever.

As an aside, this hard drive outlived the laptop which ended its life when its graphic card died a couple of weeks ago (I use the hard drive now in an older laptop that had no hard drive). Laptop was used as a desktop, I only took it with me when I was travelling and even then it was just sitting on a desk in a room. I believe that most laptop hard drives fail because of all the shocks and vibrations from carrying around - this damage being much higher than the normal wear and tear.

Anyway, I'm highly skeptical about the importance of this issue and I'll continue running with default settings 'till it dies smile.

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#58 2008-10-26 20:38:31

lloeki
Member
From: France
Registered: 2007-02-20
Posts: 456
Website

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

those are reliability guesstimates done by the manufacturer. sure some will outlive the values, but two of mine died 50~100K above the given limits. hopefully thanks to the warnings i had put them on non-critical applications before that happened.


To know recursion, you must first know recursion.

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#59 2008-10-27 16:35:56

sokuban
Member
Registered: 2006-11-11
Posts: 412

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

I just noticed that my harddrive is one of the affected ones (Toshiba MK1234GSX). However, I don't think my load cycle count is too bad. It seems to be about 20per hour. (Though I should note I haven't been using Arch since I got it, I used windows for 5-6 months on it before I got into Linux. It is 2 or 3 years old now) Its a bit higher than the average, but not as bad as some of the horror stories.

I do not experiance any of this "clicking". The hard drive clicks at shutdown, but I thought that was normal.

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   088   088   000    Old_age   Always       -       5181
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   089   089   000    Old_age   Always       -       115885

I also use it almost as a desktop. I haven't enabled any special laptop mode or anything (Arch doesn't do it by default does it?), and I really only power it on at a desk. I am nearly always plugged in when I do so. It noted on the comments at the ubuntu wiki that it is on battery power, which could explain why I don't seem to have the problem.

EDIT: It may be interesting to note, that from the time I made this post to now, I only got 8 additional cycles. (A little more than an hour difference. Wow, according to the post time 2 hours. My internal clock sucks.)

I'll do another test on battery power and see what happens. Maybe this problem doesn't occur for me with Arch.

Last edited by sokuban (2008-10-27 18:29:59)

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#60 2008-10-27 16:58:13

SnapShot
Member
Registered: 2008-08-26
Posts: 43

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

I have just read about this power management problem with laptop hard drives. My HDD is obviously affected from this problem.

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   095   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       4654
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   044   044   000    Old_age   Always       -       113707

My laptop is 2 years old. In the past I have used, almost exclusively, Windows Vista on it. I am using Arch Linux in the last 2 months and it seems like most of the load cycles are during the period of using Arch because the Load_Cycle_Count increases very rapidly. The average is somewhere above 24 cycles per hour. The average increased for 0.01 after one hour of usage so I think that I would soon hit 25 average cycles. Because of average count increaseing I think that most of the load cycles are during the last two months of Arch usage.

The situation is not bad IMHO for 2 years old HDD, I have modified laptop-mode configuration to manage APM of the HDD and set it to 254 when I am on AC and defualt 128 when I am on battery. With value of 254 the Load_Cycle_Count stoped incerasing and it increased only by 5-6 in last 12 hours with several restarts. Most of the time I am on AC so I think that this will solve the problem.

EDIT: BTW, my HDD is Seagate Momentus 5400.2 ST98823AS

Last edited by SnapShot (2008-10-27 17:01:12)

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#61 2008-10-27 23:26:49

venky80
Member
Registered: 2007-05-13
Posts: 1,002

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

[venky@ARCHROCKS ~]$ smartctl -A /dev/sda
bash: smartctl: command not found
[venky@ARCHROCKS ~]$

how can i install smartctl?


Acer Aspire V5-573P Antergos KDE

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#62 2008-10-27 23:33:04

fwojciec
Member
Registered: 2007-05-20
Posts: 1,411

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

venky80 wrote:

[venky@ARCHROCKS ~]$ smartctl -A /dev/sda
bash: smartctl: command not found
[venky@ARCHROCKS ~]$

how can i install smartctl?

Install smartmontools.

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#63 2008-10-28 00:02:45

venky80
Member
Registered: 2007-05-13
Posts: 1,002

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

[venky@ARCHROCKS ~]$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep Load
[venky@ARCHROCKS ~]$

I get nothing for Load cycle It is a fairly new DELL XPS laptop


Acer Aspire V5-573P Antergos KDE

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#64 2008-10-28 02:22:58

creslin
Member
Registered: 2008-10-04
Posts: 241

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

What is the output without grepping?

$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda

ARCH|awesome3.0 powered by Pentium M 750 | 512MB DDR2-533 | Radeon X300 M
The journey is the reward.

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#65 2008-10-28 09:54:21

jordi
Member
Registered: 2006-12-16
Posts: 103
Website

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Cycle
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       2675
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0012   031   031   000    Old_age   Always       -       697158
sudo hdsentinel /dev/sda
...
Power on time: 386 days, 13 hours
Est. lifetime: more than 1000 days

Guess there is nothing to worry here.

Last edited by jordi (2008-10-28 09:55:13)

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#66 2008-10-28 10:23:31

ChoK
Member
From: France
Registered: 2008-10-01
Posts: 346

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

hdsentinel seems to not work correctly

Power on time: 0 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes                                                                                 
Est. lifetime: more than 1000 days

I bought my laptop a month ago ...

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0012   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       732 
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0012   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       12142

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.
Picasso
Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
Saint Exupéry

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#67 2008-10-28 18:29:35

sokuban
Member
Registered: 2006-11-11
Posts: 412

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Ouch, I just ran a test on battery power and I got 42 Load Cycles per hour. (This is without any special power management)

I'm also curious to how Windows fairs, tomorrow I'll run another test with windows.

Now I'm really scared, I don't think I'll ever run my computer on battery power again now.

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#68 2008-11-06 10:22:13

erythrocyte
Member
Registered: 2008-10-21
Posts: 25

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

hi there... there's a lot of controversy surrounding this particular issue, with users all across the web submitting conflicting reports..... i'm promoting an idea on ubuntu brainstorm related to it and would like concerned users to cast their votes of support! thanks!

1

PS: it's great that the linux community has been at the forefront at discovering such issues and i think it needs to keep up the gusto in tackling them as well!

--
OS's I use

Desktop: Win XP/Arch/Ubuntu (Main OS: Arch)
Laptop: Win Vista

Last edited by erythrocyte (2008-11-06 10:26:48)

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#69 2008-11-06 11:23:13

fumbles
Member
Registered: 2006-12-22
Posts: 246

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Using Arch Linux on my Dell Latitude LS (which I've had since '01):

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0012   095   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       2393
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0012   090   090   000    Old_age   Always       -       106966
AdvancedPM=yes: mode=0x80 (128) WriteCache=enabled

IBM TravelStar

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#70 2008-11-08 22:28:22

Zibi1981
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2008-01-31
Posts: 628

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Hi!
I have a MSI MegaBook GX600P-208NL laptop with WD2500BEVS hard drive. I've been following reports on this issue since I bought my laptop, but still couldn't find the answer what is the optimal value of hdparm -B setting. Now I realize that it's always a compromise between low Load_Cycle_Count and higher HDD temperature with also higher probability that it will be damaged while carried. As I understand this issue, the value 254 is more suitable for desktop-replacement laptops, whereas the default of 128 for portable and ultra-portable devices. However on my HDD (and my laptop is somewhere between) the second value gives me a very high Load_Cycle_Count (I guess about 50/hour or even more), whereas setting the first one would mean that it wouldn't be properly protected while travelling i.e. I've also tried setting 199 but it also gave my some high count's. Does someone have any experience in setting optimal values for Western Digital HDD's, particularly this model?

P.S. State as for 08.11.2008:

bash-3.2# smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   198   198   000    Old_age   Always       -       8599
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       336

Last edited by Zibi1981 (2008-11-08 22:52:47)


"... being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed the floor under your bed."

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#71 2008-11-11 05:30:17

arew264
Member
From: Friendswood, Texas, US
Registered: 2006-07-01
Posts: 394
Website

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

jacko wrote:
barebones wrote:

I'm a bit confused about what this magic value is actually doing. Does setting it to 255 turn of the "head parking" or whatever you might call it all together? If so, this sounds much less safe than any wear that leaving it on might do. Unless you park your laptop at a desk (at which point it becomes a desktop, right?) I would think your much more likely to break a hard drive from impact with the head and the platters than just fatigue on the head arms.

Before I run off and play with my power management, does any one have a explanation (or a link to one) that really explains whats going on here? I looked through the ubuntu bug report, but there are few actual details there either.

you got it about right. The default number of 128 is surprisingly right in the middle 0 - 255, there is a reason for that, its the happy medium. By setting it to a higher number u keep the heads out over the platters and have a higher chance of causing damage to the HD but it wears less on the HD and battery by doing so, vice versa the other way around. 128 is the happy medium for a reason, set as default by manufactures.

With a 5 year warranty and default settings I doubt any manufacture can refuse replacement it the drive fails due to this natural occurrence. That is if the drive fails in the first place, u would actually have to wait and see before u start whining to much!


I am more interested in how many drives will fail due to neglect from keeping the heads 'parked' over the platters more. This requires more user input then one might first expect.

I would believe you... except that Windows changes this value as well, and apparantly there haven't been massive failures of windows hard drives because of this.

I just set mine to 254 because I don't want to turn it completely off, but realistically, do I have my laptop on when I carry it? Rarely.
I'm sure someone somewhere has taken a bunch of hard drives and tested them. As for me, my laptop has jumped back and forth between Arch and Windows (long story, it isn't Arch's fault in any way), so my Cycle Count is only at 130,000. I'm coming up on owning my laptop for... two years? I don't remember. The hard drive shows that it's been running for 4335 hours.
Edit: That's... _bad_ though, right? If I'm reading this confusing tangle correctly...

Last edited by arew264 (2008-11-11 05:39:23)

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#72 2008-11-26 18:20:20

Dheart
Member
From: Sofia, Bulgaria
Registered: 2006-10-26
Posts: 956

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Hmmm I can't quite understand which numbers should I look an what are bad, and what aren't...
Should turn on -B 255 or no?
Look at my stats:

[root@lightbringer dheart]# smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sda | egrep 'Load_Cycle|Power_On'
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       1927
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   039   039   000    Old_age   Always       -       122837

My victim you are meant to be
No, you cannot hide nor flee
You know what I'm looking for
Pleasure your torture, I will endure...

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#73 2008-11-26 20:35:51

ST.x
Member
From: Sydney, Australia
Registered: 2008-01-25
Posts: 363
Website

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Yea 255 if you want to turn it off completely, im currently using 254(least aggressive setting) even though I was on 255 for a while and after doing some research of people using the same laptop as me from here.

Last edited by ST.x (2008-11-26 20:36:52)

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#74 2008-11-26 21:14:24

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

Makes me want to spend money on a solid state drive...

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#75 2008-11-26 21:45:19

sidc
Member
Registered: 2008-06-19
Posts: 76

Re: Hard drive advanced power management level can kill your laptop drive?

msid ~  $  sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda |grep Cycle
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       819

This is all I get. I cant see the load cycles. Is there something I am doing wrong?

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