Ubuntu May Be Killing Your Laptop's Hard Drive

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."

Comments

Effects on Dell/Ubuntu OEM?

[kusanagi374]

I wonder what is the effect of this bug on officially endorsed and supported Dell notebooks with Ubuntu on them? Wouldn't something like this be caught up by Dell's QA? Or is it exclusive to 7.10?

Re:Selected Excerpts

[tchuladdiass]

The main problem is a combination of the short spindown time, and something wanting to write out to the drive every 30 seconds or so. The main culprit could be the fact that by default, a files last access time (atime) gets updated on every read, even if that read comes from cache. So when the drive is spun down, it gets spun up even on cached reads (to write out the atime).
Add "-o noatime" to the filesystems in /etc/fstab, and that should clear up the issue.

Saving Power Has a Cost

[Prototerm]

The aggressive power saving settings here are perhaps a little too aggressive, but did anyone really think you could do that totally without cost? This isn't magic, you know. It's a trade-off. If you tell your computer (usually in a laptop) to spin down the hard drives to save power, you're going to cause greater wear-and-tear on the things because each time they spin down, they have to spin back up before you can use them again. If you want to save energy without the wear, turn the bloody thing off when you're not using it.

What, you're in too much of a hurry to view the latest pr0n? Chill, dude, before you go blind!

If you run a desktop, it's doubtful you'll have a problem with this, as most desktop users turn power saving features off entirely (and yeah, I also drive a big honkin' SUV. Bite me), but be careful on a laptop. If your hard drive supports SMART, you can do a quick check of the numbers (I think the one you want is # 193, IIRC), and see if you're at risk. But not all drives support SMART (I have a laptop drive that doesn't), so as usual, YMMV.

So Ubuntu can ruin hardware?

[Boojumbunn]

You know, it's funny. A while back there was an outcry about manufacturers who decided that installing linux nullified your warrenty. This incident makes me wonder if maybe they have a point? After all... they have likely tested the hardware for long term windows reliability. They probably haven't tested their hardware for long term Linux reliability (through all the various linux types and settings.)

That said, they could probably still support their warrenty on things they know won't be affected by operating systems, like the hinge of the laptops screen.

Boojum the brown bunny

Re:The Ubuntu

[Kjella]

I actually disagree. Sure, if the manufacturer issues a recommendation or something to change it, then by all means. Otherwise Ubuntu should just keep their hands off and let the HDD manufacturer deal with it. Does Windows automagically disable this behavior?

Re:The Ubuntu

[cmowire]

I tend to think that somebody ought to take a fine toothed comb through a fairly standard desktop linux setup with a fairly standard set of applications and daemons and ruthlessly examine every disk access.

It seems like most of the things that are desirable for a server that are merely OK on a desktop are probably really bad for laptops and there's optimizations to be made.

And I'm not just thinking of Linux here. When I use a Windows laptop, I notice the hard disk spinning up on a fairly regular basis, even when I'm doing something fairly lame like web browsing or word processing. And you know that pretty much nobody thinks about it without being prodded....

But with Linux, you could make "Lapbuntu" that would contain a set of apps that were modified to aggressively avoid using the disk unless it's already spun up by patching existing software.

Ubuntu FOUND the problem

[darkonc]

One of the comments notes that at least one drive had the same problem with Windows -- The difference is that, lacking ubiquitous SMART tools, Windows users would be much less likely to get to the source of the problem.

So, it comes down to: Ubuntu users were able to diagnose the problem, and have the tools to implement a workaround. Nix to either for Windows users -- they just need to remember to replace their drive once a year.

Re:The Ubuntu

[cygonik]

Yes, it is a default set by the manufacturer. The problem is that Ubuntu touches the hard drive on a regular basis, causing the just-parked head to unpark.