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

[Roman Kyrylych]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 02:09, Xavier <shiningxc at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

Anyone else has some opinion about how to handle this?

-- 
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)