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#1 2011-06-21 18:01:26

bwat47
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Registered: 2009-10-07
Posts: 638

[SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

I have laptop mode enabled, and tried changing the hdparm -B value from 1 to 128, but it didn't seem to help much. I'd like to avoid practically turning it off by setting it to 254.

I noticed this today when my laptop was on battery, I just had google chrome and empathy open, it seemed pretty consistently every 30 seconds or so I could hear my hdd spinning up.

Last edited by bwat47 (2011-06-24 00:52:14)

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#2 2011-06-21 18:05:54

Inxsible
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

RAM size ? swap size?

Check free -m

Try to see if this happens on other linux distros as well. Try it out in Windows as well.


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#3 2011-06-21 18:11:11

bwat47
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Registered: 2009-10-07
Posts: 638

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

Ram isn't really an issue. I have 4 gigs of ram and a 4 gig swap file (which is never even really used, I just have it for hibernation). Memory use rarely goes above 1gb. I don't recall it happening so much with ubuntu/fedora, and I haven't used windows on this machine.

Last edited by bwat47 (2011-06-21 18:11:57)

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#4 2011-06-21 18:28:19

Inxsible
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

Check the drive with hdparm. If your drive support S.M.A.R.T. tools then try that as well.


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There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#5 2011-06-21 21:43:17

einhard
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From: Poland
Registered: 2010-01-05
Posts: 89

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

The best value for many disks is 240. I have lower temperatures (compared to 254), almost no spins down and decent performance on it. Values from 1 to 128 (default) don't differ very much, the HDD power management scale isn't linear. You may check if load cycles are issue in your case with

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count

Values higher than 300k are considered risky for HDD health but nobody proved it so far. Spinning down only saves power (if any, it's really marginally values), it's not needed for anything else, it can decrease performance, life of disk but also temperatures, it can potentially prevent shock damage when active (in my opinion questionable).

Last edited by einhard (2011-06-21 21:59:04)

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#6 2011-06-21 21:56:17

cybertorture
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Registered: 2010-05-05
Posts: 339

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

Just an advice, do not use laptop-mode-tools, try something splited and more simple like cpufrequtils, set DMPS on in xorg.conf and all those stuff manualy and never ever spindown your hard  drive. In my own expirience this is only anoying you and it does not make good job ... after all if u wont use your laptop a long time better set some rule to standby or hibernate , than spin dow hard drive wich ll spin up / down in every ferw minutes.

Last edited by cybertorture (2011-06-21 21:57:06)


O' rly ? Ya rly Oo

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#7 2011-06-22 03:39:06

bwat47
Member
Registered: 2009-10-07
Posts: 638

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

cybertorture wrote:

Just an advice, do not use laptop-mode-tools, try something splited and more simple like cpufrequtils, set DMPS on in xorg.conf and all those stuff manualy and never ever spindown your hard  drive. In my own expirience this is only anoying you and it does not make good job ... after all if u wont use your laptop a long time better set some rule to standby or hibernate , than spin dow hard drive wich ll spin up / down in every ferw minutes.

Spinning down the drive can be advantageous with laptops though as the hard drive is more resilient to damage when the head is parked.

I'll try setting it to 240 and see how that goes.

Last edited by bwat47 (2011-06-22 03:41:25)

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#8 2011-06-23 20:06:11

bwat47
Member
Registered: 2009-10-07
Posts: 638

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

Even changing it to 240 in laptop-mode didn't seem to change anything, I guess I'll just go without it for now. I am now using jupiter instead of laptop-mode and it seems to give me better battery life and powertop results even if it doesn't spin down the drive.

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#9 2011-06-23 23:56:54

einhard
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2010-01-05
Posts: 89

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

bwat47 wrote:

Even changing it to 240 in laptop-mode didn't seem to change anything, I guess I'll just go without it for now. I am now using jupiter instead of laptop-mode and it seems to give me better battery life and powertop results even if it doesn't spin down the drive.

Maybe it's stupid question but did you check with "sudo hdparm -B /dev/sda" if the right value was really set? You have changed it in laptop-mode but have you activated hdd power management in laptop-mode.conf or made sure if other application don't override this settings? You can set Advanced Power Management with

sudo hdparm -B 240 /dev/sda

Jupiter give you better battery time because you probably didn't activate hooks in laptop-mode-tools (especially cpufreq, sched-*-power-savings, etc. 24 hooks in total) which on default are disabled (almost every power saving feature is diabled by default in laptop-mode-tools). Spinning down the drive, like I mentioned earlier, doesn't practically change notebook power consumption. The most power hungry elements in laptop are: LCD Screen, CPU, GPU (in most cases in this order).

Last edited by einhard (2011-06-24 00:05:30)

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#10 2011-06-24 00:51:51

bwat47
Member
Registered: 2009-10-07
Posts: 638

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

I tweaked laptop mode a bit more and made sure to enable stuff like the module that stops syslogs constantly writing to disk when on battery ect.. and it seems to spin down a lot less now smile

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#11 2011-09-12 01:20:13

gmesalazar
Member
From: Brazil
Registered: 2011-07-27
Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED] HDD Spins Down/Up too often

bwat47 wrote:

I tweaked laptop mode a bit more and made sure to enable stuff like the module that stops syslogs constantly writing to disk when on battery ect.. and it seems to spin down a lot less now smile

Could you post your conf file?

Thanks.


Guilherme Salazar

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