[rhelv6-list] Heavy laptop disk cycling?

[MJang]

On Thu, 2011-01-06 at 08:58 +0100, Jan-Frode Myklebust wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 08:51:17AM -0800, MJang wrote:
> > 
> > Just noticed that since I installed RHEL 6 back in Nov, my laptop hard
> > disk (from a new T410) has gone through about 200,000 cycles, as
> > confirmed by the smartctl -a /dev/sda command. (If I remember right,
> > hard drives expire at around 600,000 cycles.)
> 
> Just for datapoint.. my T400, installed with RHEL6 october 31. (was
> running fedora-13 before that, and RHEL5 before that), has only gone
> trough 290 power cycles:
> 
> 	  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   097   097   000    Old_age Always       -       12661
> 
> 	 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age Always       -       290
> 
> I have disabled the "spin down hard disk" option in the power
> management preferences (it's an SSD, so there's nothing spinning
> anyway).

Appreciate the datapoint. FWIW, I've reported this as a bug at
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=667485 

I gather opinions vary on whether one of the following commands is the
better way to prevent the premature aging problem:

hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
hdparm -B 200 /dev/sda

I've since had to replace the hard drive, as it was spouting out lots of
read error messages -- the damage was focused on the top-level root
directory partition where RHEL 6 was installed. (the other partitions on
my drive were fine)

Thanks,
Mike