Fedora May Be Killing Your Laptop's Hard Drive?

[Konstantin Svist]

Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Konstantin Svist wrote:
>   
>> Was just reading the same article. The bug description mentions that
>> you can check your HD's S.M.A.R.T. attributes with a command like
>> smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sda
>>
>> Mine says something in the order of 300k, half the lifespan of the
>> drive :(
>>     
>
> Where did you find the lifespan info for your drive?  And how are you
> sure that you're reading the raw value from smartctl properly?  The
> smartctl man page says this:
>
>     193,loadunload - Raw Attribute number 193 contains two values. The
>     first is the number of load cycles.  The second is the number of
>     unload cycles.  The difference between these two values is the
>     number of times that the drive was unexpectedly powered off (also
>     called an emergency unload). As a rule of thumb, the mechanical
>     stress created by one emergency unload is equivalent to that
>     created by one hundred normal unloads.
>
> The output of smartctl on my laptop looks like this:
>
> ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME   FLAG    VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE     UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
> 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032  044   044   000    Old_age  Always      -       569146
>
> I really can't be sure what that raw value means.  It's not clear if I
> should be reading that as one value (569,146) or two (569 and 146) or
> if that raw value needs to be parsed in some other way to turn it into
> something useful for human consumption.
>
> Some of the folks in #fedora-devel were similarly unsure.  I'm not
> going to worry myself until I have more information on how to properly
> read the smart data.  If you know of a good source for that info,
> please pass it on.
>
> So far, I think it's a lot of worry for nothing.
>
>   
Oh, I see...
I just assumed that the RAW_VALUE will have the actual number of load 
cycles :P

As for the lifespan of the drive - there's a helpful link on the page I 
mentioned in my last email. Here's the link: 
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_momentus7200.pdf
It says my drive is rated for 600k load cycles. This number is achieved 
by statistical measurements.. so it's fairly close to the actual 
lifespan of the drive. Of course if the raw value doesn't correspond, 
there's no comparison :)

Oh, and my value of load_cycle_count:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   001   001   000    Old_age   
Always       -       352715