[Bug 59695] Re: High frequency of load/unload cycles on some hard disks may shorten lifetime

[Mihail]

Sorry if I shouldn't post here - I have Mandriva 2008 - feel free to delete my post.
I want to add my 2 cents (did not see that mentioned when browsing through this discussion).
I manage to destroy (as in works now randomly, with a lot of noise and only for around 5 minutes) two external 500GB HDD's in only one night.
What I did - I tried to backup my internal HDD by copying it to the external HDD's. Since I selected separately which directories go on which HDD, I had 6 parallel copy commands from the internal HDD (3 parallel copy streams to each external HDD). I know it's stupid (and more slow), but I thought it would complete during the night.

In the morning both external disks were clicking like mad and the copies were stalled a little after the middle.
The internal HDD is still ok.
The extenal HDD's were a Samsung and a  Hitachi  HDT725050VLAT80, put in the same type of enclosure - (ACR-HD1098).
I thought first that the problem was due to trying to copy too much (and too many streams) at once. Now (after extensive googling for 2 weeks and one lucky search term today) it appears to me that it's the same bug mentioned here, but I don't understand why it would affect an external drive more than an internal one.

On the internal drive I have
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   195   195   000    Old_age   Always       -       16832 
 3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   253   184   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4141
 4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       295

Cannot get the counters from the external drives, but they do click like
hell when they are working (once every 5 - seconds when I start them and
they don't work, 5 or 6 time/minute at the lucky restart on which they
work for more than 5  minutes):

Device: Hitachi  HDT725050VLAT80  Version:
scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0
>> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options
With -T verypermissive I get:
Error Counter logging not supported
Device does not support Self Test logging
Similar with the Samsung.

If I have the same bug, I did not see anyone mentioning that internal/external drives can be differently affected on the same system.
Hope that answers also  Mark Baas question if it affects external drives - only external drives are affected on my system.
Any comment would be appreciated.

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High frequency of load/unload cycles on some hard disks may shorten lifetime
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/59695
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