[Bug 952556] Re: [Precise] [Hardware-killer] HD restarts every few seconds

[Colin King]

Hi, Just wanted to throw some analysis into this bug report. It's take
me ~30+ hours of running tests to gather this data, so apologies if this
comes late in the day once the fix has been committed :-/

I've measured Spin Start/Stop counts on a HP Mini netbook measuring the
start/stop count during 30 minutes of idle time for various settings of
the spindown time.   I ran these tests for hdparm -B 127 and also hdparm
-B 128, and each test was ran twice to calculate an average and
std.deviation.   I also used a precision 6 digit multimeter and measured
power consumption for each run to measure the impact of the various
spindown times.

Attached is an LibreOffice spreadsheet with the data and some graphs.

No big surprises in the data - as the spintime increases we reduce the
number of start/stops over the 30 minute idle time and also we see power
consumption increasing since we are using more power to keep the drive
spinning.   The interesting thing to take from the data is the fact that
the power savings between 60 seconds spindown time and 600 seconds are
~10-15 mA which is about ~3% of the total power consumption.   So
probably a good compromise is ~2-3 minutes spindown time for an idle
system.

I'd like to repeat this with a more modern laptop and larger HDD, but
alas my x220i is away for repair this week.


** Attachment added: "hdparm spindown time analysis"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hdparm/+bug/952556/+attachment/2930971/+files/hdparm-spin-time-analysis.ods

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/952556

Title:
  [Precise] [Hardware-killer] HD restarts every few seconds

Status in “hdparm” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Hi,

  After update from Oneiric to Precise Beta 1, kernel 3.2.0-18-generic,
  I notice that, when on battery, my Dell XPS  M1330 laptop has its HD
  spin down, then restart, very, very, very often, which means several
  times per minute.

  At this pace the HD won't live long, and this reminds to me a problem
  we had few years ago with "disk killers" linuxes that were
  unloading/reloading the HD heads much too often, killing disks in a
  couple of months.

  So I prefer to ring the alarm bell early...

  Upgrading from Oneiric to Precise I didn't change any power management
  parameter, but it definitely didn't do this before (and still doesn't
  do this on other distros I have on multiboot, so that's no hardware
  issue, only Precise does that on my machine...)

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: linux-image-3.2.0-18-generic 3.2.0-18.28
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-18.28-generic 3.2.9
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-18-generic i686
  AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24.
  ApportVersion: 1.94.1-0ubuntu2
  Architecture: i386
  AudioDevicesInUse:
   USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
   /dev/snd/controlC0:  michel     3044 F.... pulseaudio
  CRDA:
   country FR:
   	(2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
   	(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
   	(5250 - 5330 @ 40), (N/A, 20), DFS
   	(5490 - 5710 @ 40), (N/A, 27), DFS
  Card0.Amixer.info:
   Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xf6dfc000 irq 46'
     Mixer name	: 'Silicon Image SiI1392 HDMI'
     Components	: 'HDA:83847616,1028020a,00100201 HDA:10951392,1028020a,00100000'
     Controls      : 33
     Simple ctrls  : 19
  CheckboxSubmission: 1ea6109db29b53f721a523a77b7f3abf
  CheckboxSystem: d00f84de8a555815fa1c4660280da308
  Date: Sun Mar 11 22:25:00 2012
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=0e7ded16-c4fc-4f81-8562-3cb1196809d3
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
  MachineType: Dell Inc. XPS M1330
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=fr_FR:fr:en_US:en
   TERM=xterm
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
  ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.2.0-18-generic root=/dev/mapper/VG1-UBUNTU ro clocksource=hpet quiet splash vt.handoff=7
  RelatedPackageVersions:
   linux-restricted-modules-3.2.0-18-generic N/A
   linux-backports-modules-3.2.0-18-generic  N/A
   linux-firmware                            1.71
  SourcePackage: linux
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-03-10 (1 days ago)
  dmi.bios.date: 12/26/2008
  dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.bios.version: A15
  dmi.board.name: 0N6705
  dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.chassis.type: 8
  dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA15:bd12/26/2008:svnDellInc.:pnXPSM1330:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0N6705:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
  dmi.product.name: XPS M1330
  dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

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