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Ubuntu May Be Killing Your Laptop's Hard Drive

Posted by kdawson on from the saving-power-at-what-cost dept.

wwrmn writes "There's a debate going on over at bugs.launchpad.net on whether it's the Ubuntu, BIOS, hard-drive manufacturer, or pick-any-player's fault, but Ubuntu (and perhaps any OS) may be dramatically shortening the life of your laptop's hard drive due to an aggressive power-saving feature / acpi bug / OS configuration. Regardless of where the fault lies or how it's fixed, you might want to take some actions now to try to prevent the damage."

6 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Ubuntu? by keithjr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If perhaps it could be "any OS" then why headline this as "Ubuntu" killing laptops? I can't find much in TFA that makes a compelling case that it isn't APCI. I'd read more but that page hurts my eyes.

  2. Isn't this what is supposed to happen? by zappepcs · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I mean, the OSS community at large finds a problem, and sets about to fix it... from the link:

    Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen wrote on 2007-10-25: (permalink)

    May i just warn ya all to NOT play the blame-game?

    It does sound like it's the fault of the BIOS (and somebody should contact them).

    To rescue a hard-drive in distress sounds like something that should have a high-priority (critical?).
    Not because it's ubuntu's fault or the bios fault. But because Ubuntu can solve this issue _now_. Doesn't sound like it is NOT being dealt with, it just isn't listed everywhere as critical and in the news all over the intarweb tubes.
    --
    Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
  3. Re:AHA! :D by ajs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's why I use windows. So I don't have to wonder who the culprit is Oh? Then you've never been caught in the "it's the graphics driver, no it's the motherboard, no it's the OS, no it's the graphics driver," loop.
  4. Not Entirely Accurate by marcantonio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's important to note that this only occurs if ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE is enabled. By default it is NOT set. From /etc/default/acpi-support:

    # Switch to laptop-mode on battery power - off by default as it causes odd
    # hangs on some machines
    ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=false

  5. Re:The Ubuntu by kebes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does Windows automagically disable this behavior? Good question. The comments in the bug report speculate that Windows either completely ignores this feature, or ignores the manufacturer values and uses its own values. (In either case, what's the point in having BIOS set defaults?)

    A conspiracy theorist might suggest that the hardware manufacturers are intentionally adding a feature that causes the drives to fail eventually (but statistically outside of the manufacturer's warranty period), so that people have to buy more hardware. The more likely explanation is that the manufacturer set the defaults, but didn't notice that the values were unsafe because Windows ignores them.

    Getting Ubuntu to override the defaults should be viewed as a short-term solution. Ultimately the hardware manufacturers should be setting default values that will not damage the hardware. Ideally they would design safeties into the hardware, which do sanity checks and reject ridiculous values.
  6. Re:The Ubuntu by PhilipMckrack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think the answer is they should both fix the problem. Drive manufacturers should issue a sane value and operating systems should check that the value is sane before using it. Same rule as accepting any data from an outside source, you tell them what they are supposed to do, but then you double check it to make sure they did. Pointing fingers at each other while customers hardware fries doesn't help anyone.