I bugzilla-ed the following hidden problem a few weeks ago. Others might check if they are experiencing it or whether it is a glitch with my hardware. If it is at all widespread, developers should know.
Since upgrading to the 2.6.10 kernels my hard disk started parking 2 to 3 times a minute, at which rate it will reach its advertised 'end of life' engineering limit on the number of head parks in less than a year. This is invisible in use: no unusual disk activity is noticable. I discovered it by noticing that my drive's Load_Cycle_Count, as reported by the smartctl, had increased as much in two weeks as in the previous 9 months.
My current kernel is 2.6.10-1.766_FC3, but earlier 2.6.10 kernels did the same. Booting back into a 2.6.9 kernel fixes the problem.
I fixed the problem for myself in 2.6.10 by adding "hdparm -B254 /dev/hda" to my startup scripts.
It is buzilla-ed at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=146628
--walter
On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 09:15:45PM +0100, walter neumann wrote:
I bugzilla-ed the following hidden problem a few weeks ago. Others might check if they are experiencing it or whether it is a glitch with my hardware. If it is at all widespread, developers should know.
Since upgrading to the 2.6.10 kernels my hard disk started parking 2 to 3 times a minute, at which rate it will reach its advertised 'end of life' engineering limit on the number of head parks in less than a year. This is invisible in use: no unusual disk activity is noticable. I discovered it by noticing that my drive's Load_Cycle_Count, as reported by the smartctl, had increased as much in two weeks as in the previous 9 months.
My current kernel is 2.6.10-1.766_FC3, but earlier 2.6.10 kernels did the same. Booting back into a 2.6.9 kernel fixes the problem.
I fixed the problem for myself in 2.6.10 by adding "hdparm -B254 /dev/hda" to my startup scripts.
Do you have any settings related to this in your BIOS power management options?
Dave
walter neumann wrote:
Since upgrading to the 2.6.10 kernels my hard disk started parking 2 to 3 times a minute, at which rate it will reach its advertised 'end of life' engineering limit on the number of head parks in less than a year. This is invisible in use: no unusual disk activity is noticable. I discovered it by noticing that my drive's Load_Cycle_Count, as reported by the smartctl, had increased as much in two weeks as in the previous 9 months.
For the unfamiliar with smartctl, can you detail which test specifically gives information on Load_Cycle_Count?
Cheers, Jonathan.
On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 01:50:59PM +0000, Jonathan Underwood wrote:
walter neumann wrote:
Since upgrading to the 2.6.10 kernels my hard disk started parking 2 to 3 times a minute, at which rate it will reach its advertised 'end of life' engineering limit on the number of head parks in less than a year. This is invisible in use: no unusual disk activity is noticable. I discovered it by noticing that my drive's Load_Cycle_Count, as reported by the smartctl, had increased as much in two weeks as in the previous 9 months.
For the unfamiliar with smartctl, can you detail which test specifically gives information on Load_Cycle_Count?
using 'smartctl -a /dev/hda' on my laptop gives
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 062 Pre-fail Always - 0 2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 040 Pre-fail Offline - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 106 106 033 Pre-fail Always - 3 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 358 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0 8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 100 100 040 Pre-fail Offline - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 1886 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 354 191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x000a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 16 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 057 057 000 Old_age Always - 436830 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 122 122 000 Old_age Always - 45 (Lifetime Min/Max 12/59) 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
Comparing Load_Cycle_Count to Power_On_Hours results in 3 load cycles per minute! This disk is running linux 2.6 (rawhide) for quite some time now.
Drives in other systems have much lower Load_Cycle_Counts. Most of the time around equal to Power_Cycle_Count. One of these machines is just up for a month or so running rawhide from the beginning and has an power_cycle of 143 and load_cycle of 147.
Is my laptop disk coming to an end??? Or is there an explanation for it...?
-Marcel
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Dave Jones -
Jonathan Underwood -
Marcel J.E. Mol -
walter neumann