Fedora May Be Killing Your Laptop's Hard Drive?

[Todd Zullinger]

Konstantin Svist wrote:
> Was just reading the same article. The bug description mentions that
> you can check your HD's S.M.A.R.T. attributes with a command like
> smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sda
>
> Mine says something in the order of 300k, half the lifespan of the
> drive :(

Where did you find the lifespan info for your drive?  And how are you
sure that you're reading the raw value from smartctl properly?  The
smartctl man page says this:

    193,loadunload - Raw Attribute number 193 contains two values. The
    first is the number of load cycles.  The second is the number of
    unload cycles.  The difference between these two values is the
    number of times that the drive was unexpectedly powered off (also
    called an emergency unload). As a rule of thumb, the mechanical
    stress created by one emergency unload is equivalent to that
    created by one hundred normal unloads.

The output of smartctl on my laptop looks like this:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME   FLAG    VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE     UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032  044   044   000    Old_age  Always      -       569146

I really can't be sure what that raw value means.  It's not clear if I
should be reading that as one value (569,146) or two (569 and 146) or
if that raw value needs to be parsed in some other way to turn it into
something useful for human consumption.

Some of the folks in #fedora-devel were similarly unsure.  I'm not
going to worry myself until I have more information on how to properly
read the smart data.  If you know of a good source for that info,
please pass it on.

So far, I think it's a lot of worry for nothing.

-- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Life is an unfolding, rather than a race.
    -- Bob Snider

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