Extremely Fast Increase Of Load/Unload Cycle Count On Netbook HDD

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Well, I recently purchased an Asus 1001PX netbook that comes with a WDC WD2500BEVT-80A23T0 HDD. Everything is fine except the number of Load/Unload Cycles is increasing crazy-fast! Currently at 25,838 after 174 power on hours and it'll increase as I type this. That's 148/hour or 2.5/minute. I can also hear the HDD click whenever it unloads and then almost instantly loads the drive heads back. It sometimes does this "every-so-often" and occasionally it does it in quick succession. Around 3 cycles in 5 seconds :eek:

I've done as much Googling as I can around this and the only things I come up with are:

It's Linux's fault. Which is weird because (I'm currently using Win 7 Starter) when I gave Ubuntu a quick try installed I'm sure it went away.

Use a DOS utility called wdidle3.exe to change how long it waits to unload. Which is only to be used on drives that aren't this one.

I'm currently puzzled unless it is "desired" behaviour in the BIOS or HDD firmware. Under Windows I've tried with and without (from manufacturers website): Intel Chipset drivers, Intel SATA Drivers and Asus Super Hybrid Engine and nothing works.

Anyone have any ideas? At this rate I'll be at over 400,000 cycles in less than a year :(
 
If it's like the WD 3.5" green drives (EADS, EARS, etc.) then as part of the HDD's power management they are set to unload the heads after 8 seconds of inactivity. Odd that you've seen 3 in 5 seconds though. If you've been searching you've probably seen the concern that the unload cycle count can get to high values quickly and cause (otherwise) premature failure of the disk but I've not heard of any problems in practice. I've used wdidle3 successfully on my EADS& EARS drives (which WD have seemingly said are OK to use wdidle3 on - see http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop...cle-Cout-after-short-operation-time/m-p/16154).

Have you got something like smartmontools regularly polling the disk?
 
Chiribo said:
I assume you've not tried installing a different OS to see if it is in fact an OS issue?
Any bios updates for your machine?
Click to expand...

Well I did have Ubuntu on here for a day or so just to try it out (before formatting and installing Win 7 Starter fresh from a USB drive). While I'm not certain I think that I didn't hear the load/unload clicking. Will dual-boot tomorrow to monitor it and actually tell for certain from S.M.A.R.T. data.

wonko said:
If it's like the WD 3.5" green drives (EADS, EARS, etc.) then as part of the HDD's power management they are set to unload the heads after 8 seconds of inactivity. Odd that you've seen 3 in 5 seconds though. If you've been searching you've probably seen the concern that the unload cycle count can get to high values quickly and cause (otherwise) premature failure of the disk but I've not heard of any problems in practice. I've used wdidle3 successfully on my EADS& EARS drives (which WD have seemingly said are OK to use wdidle3 on - see http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop...cle-Cout-after-short-operation-time/m-p/16154).

Have you got something like smartmontools regularly polling the disk?
Click to expand...

Yeah, at this rate it's going to go into 1,000,000 after about two and a half years. I've killed all non-Windows processes (getting it down to 25) and it still does it. Although it does now seem to do a little group of them and then either spin down the HDD or turn it off completely. Despite my power settings. I think it must just be the aggressive power management of the HDD. Or worse with that and aggressive power management from the BIOS too.

As an additional bit of information I'm currently using a WD Scorpio Black (7200RPM laptop drive) in my desktop as the primary HDD after my MacBook (which had some Mac OS X use and then mostly Windows) died. It has just under 100,000 load/unload cycles - mostly I'm guessing from its Mac OS X days - and is increasing by 1 every-so-often.


*Edit*

I should add that it doesn't do this say if I actively browse the web with pages being saved to my browser's cache on the HDD. Just if the computer (as it so appears) isn't using the HDD.

*Edit*
 
Last edited:
Well after lots of playing around (and some totally random Googling giving an acceptable Windows solution) I have come up with the following:

1) Drive is load/unloading about 25,000/Month with current usage. Drive is rated for 600,000 so it would reach that in 2 years :eek:

2) This is some BIOS/HDD Firmware setting

3) Ubuntu seems to override the hardware setting when the laptop is plugged in. When on battery it does as Windows does. This can be overridden with:

Code: 
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda

run with administrator privileges. Goes away with Shutdown/Sleep though and requires far, far more work (than I want to look into :p ) to get the command reissued on startup/wake.

4) For Windows I managed to find quietHDD. A little program that changes the value like the Linux command above.

What a pain but at least I've found workable solutions :)
 
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