[arch-dev-public] Load_Cycle_Count and storage-fixup

[Xavier]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Roman Kyrylych
<roman.kyrylych at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I wanted to bring this long time ago when I discovered the problem
> with my old Seagate Momentus 5400.3, but then forgot
> since my new WD Scorpio Blue is less affected by this.
>
> But recently I noticed a couple of reports about the issue on forums and IRC,
> so I'm bringing this here.
>
> The problem is that on some HDDs (and/or with some BIOSes?)
> HDD head parking is done too often.
> This can be seen with Load_Cycle_Count in smartctl output
> being increased quickly (more than once per minute),
> and heard as relatively frequent clicks during low IO load.
> More at http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Known_issues#Drives_which_perform_frequent_head_unloads_under_Linux
>
> Basically, if Load_Cycle_Count divided by Power_On_Hours is more than 30-60
> and your HDD is powered for many hours every day
> - your HDD may reach the limit in a couple of years.
>
> More info specifically about WD Green HDDs:
> http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2008/4/10/1396844/thread
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-bugs/2008-April/035194.html
> (you can find wdidle3 with google, it's not accessible from WD site).
>
> I want to stress that this is _not_specific to WD Green drives.
>
> The problem is easy to fix, but that's if you _know_ about it.
> I think most of users are not aware of it.
>
> Now to the point of this message and why it is on this mailing list.
> What is the best way to handle this?
>
> There is a nice script which automatically tunes HDD options
> to fix this depending on HDD and/or laptop model.
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tj/storage-fixup.git
>
> Would it be okay if we package it and put it in core & install CD?
> Would it be enough to put this information in Official Install Guide?
> Would it be better to not care that much about this,
> and only mention it in some wiki page plus link in (Post-)Install Guide?
>
> I am really not sure what is the best way here.
> I'd like to hear your feedback on this.
>

+1 for spreading more the noise about this.
This was the opinion I expressed in this old thread :
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39258