fc3 with kernel 2.6.10 stresses hard disk.

[Marcel J.E. Mol]

On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 01:50:59PM +0000, Jonathan Underwood wrote:
> walter neumann wrote:
> 
> >Since upgrading to the 2.6.10 kernels my hard disk started parking 2
> >to 3 times a minute, at which rate it will reach its advertised 'end
> >of life' engineering limit on the number of head parks in less than a
> >year. This is invisible in use: no unusual disk activity is noticable.
> >I discovered it by noticing that my drive's Load_Cycle_Count, as
> >reported by the smartctl, had increased as much in two weeks as in the
> >previous 9 months.
> 
> For the unfamiliar with smartctl, can you detail which test specifically 
> gives information on Load_Cycle_Count?

using 'smartctl -a /dev/hda' on my laptop gives

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   100   100   062    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0005   100   100   040    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0007   106   106   033    Pre-fail  Always       -       3
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       358
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000b   100   100   067    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0005   100   100   040    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0012   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       1886
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   060    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       354
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x000a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       16
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0012   057   057   000    Old_age   Always       -       436830
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0002   122   122   000    Old_age   Always       -       45 (Lifetime Min/Max 12/59)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0008   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x000a   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

Comparing Load_Cycle_Count to Power_On_Hours results in 3 load cycles per minute!
This disk is running linux 2.6 (rawhide) for quite some time now.

Drives in other systems have much lower Load_Cycle_Counts. Most of the time around equal
to Power_Cycle_Count. One of these machines is just up for a month or so running
rawhide from the beginning and has an power_cycle of 143 and load_cycle of 147.

Is my laptop disk coming to an end??? Or is there an explanation for it...?

-Marcel
-- 
     ======--------         Marcel J.E. Mol                MESA Consulting B.V.
    =======---------        ph. +31-(0)6-54724868          P.O. Box 112
    =======---------        marcel at mesa.nl                 2630 AC  Nootdorp
__==== www.mesa.nl ---____U_n_i_x______I_n_t_e_r_n_e_t____ The Netherlands ____
 They couldn't think of a number,           Linux user 1148  --  counter.li.org
    so they gave me a name!  -- Rupert Hine  --  www.ruperthine.com