Ubuntu :: Hard Disk With Frequent Head Load/unload Cycles (10.04)?
May 15, 2010
I have a problem in Ubuntu 10.04. The bug is well know which makes the hard disk head to park often (2-3 times per minute) that's dangerous for the drive in the long term and annoying for me (click-click-click).I found out the "ugly-fix" for old Ubuntu version which was :hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda instead of 128. It works. The problem is that it doesn't remains (when restart/standby/ac connection-disconnection).I found a script well known too :Code:1) make a file named "99-hdd-spin-fix.sh". The important thing is starting with "99".2) make sure the file contains the following 2 lines (fix it if you have PATA HDD):
#!/bin/sh
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
3) copy this file to 3 locations:
I created a thread about a problem a I had with my hard disk clicking whilst idle little while ago and I may now have stumbled upon a possible solution. The strange thing with the problem is that Ubuntu/Kubuntu didn't cause this problem but Opensuse 11.2 does.
I installed Fedora 13 to have a glimpse of what all the fuss was about and noticed that I had the same problem (hard disk clicking whilst idle ~ every 20 secs or so). Now there's a wiki on this subject and a few bug reports: [url]
Problem Description
Some ATA harddrives perform very frequent head unloads under Linux significantly shortening their lifespans. Root cause
The inactivity timer for head unload is configured too aggressively either via ATA APM (Advanced Power Management) feature or other non-standard means. Such aggressive settings are very fragile to changes in IO pattern and under Linux many such drives unload their heads only to re-load them shortly. Note that this relentless unloading/reloading cycle can also be triggered under Windows by installing programs which can alter the IO pattern (e.g. certain vaccine programs which runs in background).
Now two of the listed models with this problem are basically identical to my model (Dell Inspiron 1520) and basically share the same hardware: Dell Vostro 1500 and XPS 1520.
The workaround listed is to:
set APM to 254
Furthermore, there is a script: Storage-Fixup which can also be downloaded from opensuse software search. Indeed there is a report of this for a Vostro 1500: Gmane Loom
The report suggests looking at: Disk Power Management - openSUSE which lists a method to create a configuration file to management disk power management:
My question is whether I could download the storage-fixup rpm [url] has a description of it and it can be found: Software.openSUSE.org) and install it to (hopefully) solve the issue or should I follow the method given in: Disk Power Management - openSUSE
I wish openSUSE to supply a daemon, which uses the /dev/freefall to provide hard disk head crash protection. There is an example application in usr/src/linux/Documentation/hwmon/hpfall.c which might be used as a base for such a daemon and the needed modules (hp_accel and lis3lv02d) are present in kernel 2.6.31.
I recently received a used laptop that I was going to use for my kids, a Compaq Presario 2100. Everything went fine on the install, however I could not get the WiFi to work. The internal card, a Broadcom BCM4306, was attempting to use the b43legacy drivers, which I understand to be the native driver for this card, but would get all sorts of strange errors in 'dmesg', and would never get a solid connection.
After fiddling with this for 2 days, and reading countless troubleshooting guides, I finally gave up and decided to get it working with ndiswrapper. Everything worked perfect, except I can only get it to work if I first load b43legacy, then load ndiswrapper, then unload b43legacy. If I blacklist b43legacy, and just load ndiswrapper, iwconfig does not report a wlan0.
I ran across this posting, and decided to try this, but it also did not work. Plus, with this file in place, any attempt to use modprobe would complain about every line of that file.
Anyone else having issues with the Atheros AR8132 and the atl1c module? I am on the 2.6.38.8-35.fc15.i686.PAE kernel, tried with a few others but it's flaky no matter which I choose.
Sometimes if I load/unload the atl1c module a few times the link will come up, but it seems the module is not even being loaded at boot and I have to modprobe it just to see the NIC.
I'm having installation issues with linux. I'm trying to set up a dual boot with vista and linux. I prepared my computer by backing up my files and partitioning my hard drive, leaving 20GB for linux. I downloaded Linux Mint 7, and booted from USB (using the universal USB installer from pendrivelinux.com). All good, entered into linux and installed by following the prompts (selecting use largest unallocated partition to point linux to the partition). At this stage the screen cleared to just leave me with the desktop background.
I patiently waited for it to reboot which never happened. So I waited for 20mins or so, then shut the computer down because I couldn't think of what else to do. When I restarted (without using the livecd/usb) it just went straight to vista. I did a bit of reading and found it might have been something to do with vista taking over grub, and some of the tutorials suggested downloading EasyBCD. So I did that, here's the summary:
Code: There are a total of 2 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader. Bootloader Timeout: 30 seconds. Default OS: Linux Mint 7
Entry #1 Name: Microsoft Windows Vista BCD ID: {current} Drive: C: Bootloader Path: Windowssystem32winload.exe Windows Directory: Windows
Entry #2 Name: Linux Mint 7 BCD ID: {default} Drive: C: Bootloader Path: NST st_grub.mbr
Windows Boot Loader identifier {3fb6bf63-700d-11db-8409-0016d303c867} device partition=C: path Windowssystem32winload.exe description Microsoft Windows Vista locale en-US inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7} recoverysequence {572bcd55-ffa7-11d9-aae2-0007e994107d} recoveryenabled Yes osdevice partition=C: systemroot Windows resumeobject {3fb6bf64-700d-11db-8409-0016d303c867} nx OptIn
Real-mode Boot Sector identifier {bbf9569e-31e5-11df-a844-91f7867d7949} device partition=C: path NST st_grub.mbr description Linux Mint 7
Now when I turn my computer on, I get options for vista and linux. Vista works fine, but if I select Linux Mint 7 I get an error that reads "cannot load from harddisk, insert systemdisk and press any key".
A while back I decided to use CentOS as my main day to day operating system :) Previously I was mainly using Fedora (old Red Hat <9.x) and occasionally Debian / Debian based distros.Since I am running CentOS on a Dell M1530 laptop I am concerned by the Load Cycle issue that plagues many laptop hard disks due to aggressive default power management. For those of you who are not aware of the Load Cycle issue please refer to the following link from Ubuntu forums which documents it really well:URL...
In Fedora and various other distros I have successfully used Laptop Mode Tools URL... to help set the hard disk APM value meaning the hard disk would stop rapidly increasing the Load Cycle value when running on mains. The setting I choose to use was hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda when the laptop is running off of mains power and set in scripts supplied with the Laptop Mode Tools RPM which will run as a service.
The problem I am having with CentOS is I can't get Laptop Mode Tools to run as a service either from the RPMForge repo (old version) or by installing the latest Fedora version from Laptop Mode Tools site above. I am therefore having to manually set hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda when running which I occasionally forget An error is seen during boot but which changes the CentOS boot to verbose mode but I am unable to locate the error in any of the /var/log files so I can put it in here.Can anyone suggest a way of creating a script suitable for CentOS which will auto apply the above (or other) power saving value for when a laptop is running off of mains power?If anyone can also advise how I can confirm what the error is I can also forward it to the author of Laptop Mode Tools.
Since upgrading (fresh install) to Lucid, I've been having to go through disk checks about once or twice a week on boot. I'm not sure why Lucid thinks it needs to check my disk so often. I looked into it a bit, and found a command that was supposed to stop disk checks happening so often.
Code: sudo tune2fs -i 2w `mount | awk '$3 == "/" {print $1}'` is supposed to set it to 2 weeks. I used "/home" too as I have home on a separate partition and didn't want that to be checked too. All was fine until I booted up to find another disk check today. It can sometimes take over half an hour to finish and C to cancel doesn't always work either.
I always shutdown cleanly, unless Ubuntu completely locks up, which happens maybe once every six months (although it did happen yesterday, but I have rebooted it a few times since then with no checks happening until just now). Is there a way to just disable checks completely? I wouldn't mind running them manually every now and then, I just don't want to do it as often as Lucid does.
I've been struggling with suspend to disk (hibernate if you prefer) for a while, it works after a fresh boot and for several days' worth of overnight hibernation as I go about my work, but eventually it stops working - it gets to the splash screen but the bar only makes it a little way to the left before stopping, and then after a timeout the system just returns to the "session locked" screen - no real error messages.
I've done my best to try to find out what's causing it to break but I'm really struggling, the suspend process doesn't appear to write anything helpful to the dmesg log or the /var/log/pm-suspend.log - the only thing that I've seen at about the right point in time is cifsd, but I can't be sure that it's a problem with cifs as hibernate continues to work immediately after mounting windows shares with cifs.
I had this corrupted external hdd and so I formatted the main partition on it on windows but messed up in the formatting and ended up having to format the entire thing. I got some weird message about it not being initialized (no not mounted) so I was in compmgmt.msc in windows and right clicked it in device manager and it asked for master boot or GUID I selected the latter and formatted. Worked fine and all for a bit but now it doesn't show up as a drive. I noticed when using compmgmt.msc it showed up that it had installed driver software and was being recognized but in the partition editing area there was nothing on this drive, reinstalling driver software doesn't seem to help. Also GParted wont load up when I have it plugged in and Disk Utility doesn't show it. I am requesting help to fix this problem within Ubuntu 10.10 somehow so I can use it properly.
after installing Ubuntu on one WD 500 GB hard disk and after making mistake and pasting wrong code into Terminal:my OTHER WD 500 GB hard disk that was also in the system (I guess it was "hd1") - died.The problem must be, I guess, I typed wrong code: "hd1,1" instead of "hd0,0".)500 GB (NTFS) of data was on that other (non-Ubuntu) hard disk, and now I can not access it anymore. While booting, system gives "Hard Disk Error" warning and stops.One again: I installed Ubuntu od one hard disk and at the end of instalation I pasted wrong code for GRUB, giving address of another hard disk. Now that other hard disk has error and will not work
I have a sata 320 gb with mandriva linux 2009.1 on it.And it is what curently atached to my cpu. It is shown as 'sda' in the partition table.I also have another 40gb hard disk with windows xp installed on it.It is shown as 'hda' in the partition table . Now what i want to do is attach this 40gb hard disk to my pc and configure grub on my 320gb hard disk('sda') so as to boot windows xp(which is residing on the second hard disk,'hda')Can anyone tell me if what im doing is feasible or not? If it is feasible,can anyone suggest me how to get it working. I know i just need to add 2-3 lines to my grub.conf, but dont know what exactly i need to write.
I had a dual boot (windows 7 + debian), both of them installed in my internal hard disk, with the GRUB in it. I have recently installed a second linux distro (mint), but I put it in an external hard disk. Now the GRUB allows me to boot any of the three operating systems, but I need the external disk to do it. It seems that after the mint installation the GRUB is now working from the external disk (if the external disk is not connected, the machine does not boot.) �Is there a way to change the location of the GRUB, to the internal hard disk of my laptop?
My requirement is to route ssh sessions from a single head node to multiple slave nodes. So what i want is, for a client there is just one point of entry (master/head node) to ssh into, it evaluates the load on the slave nodes connected on to internal network and routes the ssh session, kind of a ssh load balancer. Do you have any idea what open source solution i can apply for my problem?
I have tried using LVS piranha, it works well for http and https load balancing but not for ssh load balancing.
I was using Terminal and browsing a directory in my home folder. My "home" directory is located on "/dev/sdb1". When in Terminal I typed "ls" in one of my directories and the output was garbage. The output didn't show the files in the directory. I think it said something like, "input/output error". Unfortunately, I didn't write the exact error down. Instead I rebooted.The hard disk with the problem is:
Code: $ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdb [sudo] password for brian:
Is it possible to install GRUB in the MBR of the only bootable disk in the system, but load configuration and images from another disk?Basically I want to install GRUB on /dev/sda, but menu and images will be under /dev/sdb2.Note: /dev/sdb is not bootable.
I recently bought 320 GB Trancend external hard disk and working fine days back.Earlier i could copy from and to the hard disk with out any issue. I dont know what happened after that now i am not able to write any files in to the external hard disk. This is not NTFS formatted device. here is some of the out put from terminal.
Code: sundar@sundar-sundar:~$ fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
I have two internal harddisk. Harddisk 1 has ubuntu, fedora installed and harddisk 2 has ubuntu installed. I normally connect either one, and use it. How can i always keep connect both harddisks, and at the start, select from which harddisk to boot? Or it's not possible?
ran out of space in my /home dir. Have a second hard drive to install and would like to designate it as additional space for /home. I do not want to mount it as a dir inside my home I would like it to simply work as though my /home simply has more space available to it.
is there a way to write/unpack .qcow2 hard disk image directly to real hard drive in Linux?(I know it's possible to unpack .qcow2 to .raw and then dd to drive, but I'd like to skip .raw since its large)
I'm trying to resize a partition on an IDE hard disk to use the entire disk but can not get more than a 309GB partition. I can get 295, 300, 301, 302GB, etc... fine but start getting problems with anything over 309GB. I get the following error with 310GB or more:
error: block relocator should have relocated 533 Warning: You should reinstall your boot loader before rebooting. Read section 4 of the Parted User documentation for more information. I am using Slackware 12.1, GNU parted 1.8.8, ext2 filesystem.
So everytime I resume Ubuntu from hibernation, it remains black for a time then 2 messages on the screen appear for about 10 seconds before I can log-in:
Code: [ 0.556247] [drm:init_ring_common] *ERROR* render ring head not reset to zero ctl 00000000 head 02001000 tail 00000000 start 02001000 [ 0.556320] [drm:init_ring_common] *ERROR* render ring head forced to zero ctl 00000000 head 00000000 tail 00000000 start 02001000
I am on F15 32-bit with GNOME 3. I keep getting "A Hard Disk Is Failing" warnings from the Disk Utility, very frequently. Is this a serious issue? Because I knew this to be a bug in Palimpsest DU back in F13/14. Also how can I disable any notifications from this application?
I recently reinstalled Ubuntu 10.10 on my system. I then wanted to get rid of Windows 7 (which crashed and doesn't work) so I deleted the OS_Install partition that was on there. The tutorial I was reading told me to delete both Linux Swap partitions so I could take all the unallocated space and put it on one partition (/dev/sda2). So I did that. At first everything worked great, then I ran like 250 updates that were listed and now it won't load my 250GB external hard drive which has all my files on it that were backed up from Windows. I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but my system won't boot with the drive pluged in and neither will my other Windows Vista system. My first though was that it wasn't being recognized but when I ran lsusb it said it was there.
Code:
root@caleb-A6200:/home/caleb# lsusb Bus 002 Device 006: ID 1058:0704 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Passport External HDD Bus 002 Device 003: ID 13d3:5092 IMC Networks Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
