[arch-general] Hard disc clicks

[Nicolas Bevilacqua]

  El 02/09/2010 01:58 a.m., David C. Rankin escribió:
> On 09/01/2010 10:22 PM, Isaac Dupree wrote:
>> On 09/01/10 00:25, Rafael Beraldo wrote:
>>> The thing is, 128 keeps the hard disc spinning down a lot. In fact, 
>>> 254 is
>>> quite noiseless, but as from 253 the clicking sound returns. I read 
>>> this bug
>>> page [3] but found nothing new. It is worth remembering that, 
>>> sometimes,
>>> when I'm watching a movie or TV show with mplayer, it stops for less 
>>> than I
>>> second, then I hear the disc spinning faster and the video continues.
>>
>> Some hard drives, such as yours, unfortunately don't have an 
>> intermediate
>> setting. The hdparm -B values aren't in practice standardized.
>>
>>> So, how did you guys set the power manager with hdparm in your 
>>> laptops? Does
>>> anybody else have this problem? Since I move my netbook often, 
>>> should I set
>>> it to 128 even if it spins down more than four times a minute?
>>
>> Depends whether you want your netbook to break (A) when you drop it 
>> or (B) after
>> e.g. three years (or however long, depending on the frequency, more 
>> clicks =
>> less lifetime). Some disks have sudden acceleration sensors that will 
>> also try
>> to park the disk head when the disk feels itself being thrown across 
>> the room,
>> making break-when-you-drop-it somewhat less likely. Since you have 
>> audible
>> clicks, this might also weigh in favor of avoiding the clicks, if the 
>> noise
>> bothers you or others...
>>
>> -Isaac
>>
>
> In my experience, hard disc clicks are never good. I've run drives 
> where the read/write head would click on occasion and continue to 
> work, but you always know in the back of your mind that there is a 
> issue with the drive controller sending the read/write head on 
> excursions across the disc to either figure out where it is or to try 
> and cage itself. Neither should occur normally (OK some drives do cage 
> the r/w head normally on spindown) I have run drives like that for 1 
> year+ before the clicking finally becomes the deathnail of the drive.
>
> Backup early and often...
>
I have the same netbook and the same problem. I resolved by changing a 
few lines in the file /etc/hdparm.conf.

Adding at the end the lines:

# apm setting when on battery
apm_battery = 254
# -S standby (spindown) timeout for the drive
spindown_time = 0

But, I don't now if this solution is the better.

PD: Sorry, my english is not very good :b.