Strange HDD behavior

kismet010 · 12-17-2010, 10:16 AM

I don't understand this. Continuous system freezes while making "HDD head moving and spin up sound". I have laptop-mode-tools off. APM disabled with mswindows tool.
If you need any command or log to help me, I'll paste on pastebin.

Quote:

$ sudo hdparm -B /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
APM_level = off

$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda |grep Load_Cycle
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 094 094 000 Old_age Always - 75929
// and growing..

Thanks

stress_junkie · 12-17-2010, 10:21 AM

Busted disk.

The system freezes because when a process tries to write to the disk it will block all other disk writes. When other processes try to write to the disk they have to wait for the previous processes to finish their disk writes. These processes cannot do anything else until they perform their disk write so they are effectively "hung". Eventually enough processes are waiting to write to disk to freeze the system.

The disk spinning and the heads moving indicate that the onboard controller is not working properly.

TobiSGD · 12-17-2010, 10:41 AM

I don't know if that helps, but try to set the APM level to 254 instead to off.

Dani1973 · 12-17-2010, 11:20 AM

Might be wise to backup your stuff before the drive completely dies.

Sounds like the drive is "restarting".
Could be a drive, controller that is failing or maybe the drive isn't well fastened and properly connected.

kismet010 · 12-18-2010, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

I don't know if that helps, but try to set the APM level to 254 instead to off.

seems like 255 don't do any change, but 254 make it more quiet