Ubuntu
acpi-support package

  1. Bug #59695
  2. Comment #38

Comment 38 for bug 59695

Revision history for this message
Kamil Páral (kamil.paral) wrote : Re: default value in power.sh potentially kills laptop disks

I have Dell Latitude C640 with Western Digital 40GB. The harddisk is 3 days old (brand new) and I have 900 load cycle count. My harddisk "clicks" (increases load cycle count) roughly twice a minute (regardless battery or AC mode), but (this is important) only when there is absolutely no other harddisk activity. If I use some app which few times a minute reads or writes a file, there is no load cycle count increase.

I have also tried Windows XP - there is no cycle count increase, no hdd clicking. In BIOS, hdd clicks once (the sound is distinguishable from normal activity) - after that, it's silent. In Ubuntu 7.10, twice a minute.

For those who have IBM/Hitachi, you can try download Hitachi Feature Tool
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
and disable/tweak APM manually right from that livecd. Maybe after that you will not have to hack scripts (maybe it can "force" the APM setting), but I am not sure of that.