ive just installed ubuntu only to find its tearing my hard-drive to bits with this excessive parking issue...

can anyone tell me (a noob) how to stop it?

is there another version of linux that WONT do this?


EDIT: ive since disabled "spin down disks when possible" on the 'on battery' section (even though im running off 'mains' with a dying battery which it tells me of at every boot) and i havent heard it yet


thanks

You can take the battery out and run it like a desktop. I don't run my laptop with the battery; I cycle it every 3 months.

I have sounds, clicking, coming from hard-drive..after some research i think its related to the HDD power management and is a known issue with Linux that doesnt seem to be fixed.. from what ive read its the hard-drive going into power saving modes that arent compatible with Linux OS - this causes the heads to excessively 'park' (whatever that is) - it can however damage your hard drive over short period of time... im shocked that linux/ubuntu programmers have not dealt with this issue as it seems to affect many people...those with laptops notice it more due to the hard-drive being only inches away and can hear it..

can anyone help a NOOB fix this? - the fixes ive seen i dont know ho to apply

i previously changed the pwr mngmt settings to stop the "spin down disks when possible" option on battery (even though im on mains) which seemed to work last night, but today ive come back on and its doing it again, ive set the "spin down disks when possible" back to ON then OFF but it still doing it

PLEASE HELLLPP - Linux is destroying my hard-drive...

thanks

Hi,

Merged the two threads. Posting the same problem with different titles will only cause confusion.

I suggest that you look at 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way' so in the future your queries provide information that will aid us in diagnosis of the problem/query.

What do you see in the logs? Check out 'dmesg' & '/var/log' for errors.

setting it hdparm to 255 (OFF) or 254 (least amount of power management) does not work

when OFF it still does this...

i read one person saying 128 worked for him so trying that stopped the clicking being as loud but you could still hear the arm doing something then an almost silent whirr/clicking then the arm moving again and that noise stopping - this is extremely quite... quieter than the clicking when APM is on/off and even THAT is quieter than standard clicking when files are being accessed - the point is every 6 seconds or so when idle the drive is doing something no matter what i set it at - it does not do this in windows XP, Vista or 7

its a seagate momentus 120Gb 7200rpm i bought about 2-3 years ago

Hi,
it could be getting errors. What does "dmesg" show?

do i just type that in terminal?

Yes as root

/begin history lesson
"Parking" is an out of fashion idea as all drives now autopark. The idea was that before you switched off, you 'parked' the heads so they wouldn't clunk off your hd platter while over data if the thing was moved. We had little utilities like 'park.exe' which would reassure us "You can safely turn off the power now!" and engineers would freak if you turned off without parking the disk heads. Autoparking is done mechanically and pulls the heads to the centre as the disk spins down.
/end history lesson.

IMHO, you are breaking rule no. 1: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Spindown loses you access time but is otherwise harmless. Fix something that's broken.

Hi,

Some users confuse servo operations as parking. Some HDD do thrash a bit depending on filesystem layout or even swapyness can cause some confusion for users that really do not fully understand what is going on overall with their system. Some do not realize that the mounting of the hdd inside of the case can transfer & magnify the sound. I like hdd shock mounting for a tower case, adds some $$ but worth it.

Now if the drive is indeed clicking then the head is going to limits, this can be a problem with some user misuse of hdparm or sdparm on the drive types.

Loads of people do not understand that the circuits on the drive control the head positioning via the driver from the kernel.

Integrated Drive Electronics have taken a lot of the load away from the OS. Now SATA has provided even better control via serial interfaces. If you read the referenced links you will find loads of information to aid you to understand current hdd systems.

Too bad we can't rid the users terminology with older style control theory that continues to confuse.

MFM/MMFM drives were nice at the time but let's drop the association of terms for older technology to newer technologies. I can remember when IDE was introduced and all the confusion with comparisons.

Hi,
I used to fix Micropolis and Seagate drives. The drives should go for ages before they have do a seek to re-calibrate themselves. They used to seek to dedicated tracks to retrieve the info.
Some drives that have embedded servo will do it more often than drives that have servo tracks.
If the sound is quite loud it could mean that the actuator is hitting the stops i.e it is trying to seek past end of the disk.

cheers
Nigel

this only happens in LINUX.... so its not a HARD-DRIVE ISSUE...

SMART shows my drive to be fully op and in good working order..

as this does not happen in windows im correct in thinking its a problem with linux coding...

the drive is not broken, nor is it servo operations - i can leave it idle for hours and it will still click.click.click.click...whirr...pause for 6 seconds or so .... REPEAT very quietly - this is not servo ops or anything that SHOULD be happening, if you look about you will see that this is an issue with a lot of laptop hard-drives that run linux/ubuntu - ive tried all the fixes but all i can do is make it slightly quieter by changing hdparm to 128 ... 254 or 255(off) does not work...

now if hard-drive was PARKING ITS HEADS or AUTOPARK why does it repeat every 6 seconds or so? surely this is like parking your car then reversing it back out to park again...over and over? and cos it only happens in linux means only one thing... Linux power saving code in the kernel does not work properly on my drive.... ive had all versions of windows on this laptop and it does not suffer

Hi,

You looked at the 'dmesg' or other logs in 'var/log'? Possibly share it via posting within code tags # or quote the appropriate/relative information for the device.

What about some information from the drive? Post the output of 'hdparm -I /dev/your_device' (replace your_device with drive assignment). BTW, is this a SATA or IDE device? Ubuntu Version? Updated?

You are not helping us to help you. This is a one way communication path, until you provide us with some proper feedback this issue will continue. Saying it doesn't happen with M$ doesn't mean a thing to me.

So take a deep breath, look at the logs and device information then post the portions so we can help.