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100 Comments
- crazylinuxguy, on 11/04/2007, -3/+46yes, way too many stories on ubuntu killing hard drives when it has nothing to do with ubuntu. Same thing would happen in other distros, unless they change the defaults.
- ubuntudemon, on 11/02/2007, -11/+43 I’m a big fan of Ubuntu. I don’t want to see Ubuntu hurt because it’s not Ubuntu who is setting these aggressive power management defaults.
Some background of the problem :
If your harddrive spins down and spins up again your Load_Cycle_Count increases by one. If your harddrive head parks and unparks again your Load_Cycle_Count increases by one. You don’t want your Load_Cycle_Count to increase too fast.
Harddrive manufacturers seem to claim most harddrives can handle at least 600.000 Load_Cycles but this is probably an average under ideal circumstances. My harddrive started to die slowly when at a Load_Cycle_Count of 200.000.
Ubuntu is NOT causing aggressive power management. The following things might instead cause aggressive power management settings :
* your (laptop) harddrive firmware might have aggressive power management defaults (operating system independent)
* your (laptop) BIOS might set your harddrive to use aggressive power management (operating system independent)
* you might have enabled laptop-mode in /etc/default/acpi-support (disabled by default) which will set your harddrive to use aggressive power management
These aggressive power management settings are set by your BIOS or harddrive firmware. Windows and/or Mac OS X might be overriding these settings which might make Ubuntu look bad if Ubuntu doesn't override these settings.
Read here what Matthew Garret an experienced and well known Ubuntu Developer has said about this problem :
http://www.advogato.org/person/mjg59/diary/82.html
for more information see :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-sup ... - TheG2, on 10/31/2007, -2/+20Ubuntu hurt? Seriously, its an OS not a child people.
- augustz, on 11/03/2007, -11/+27Everyone keeps on saying BIOS fault etc. The fact is
a) this is a serious issue
b) windows, os X and many distributions override bios defaults for things like ACPI / Power Management for good reason. Why not Ubuntu. You are destroying drives (17 load cycles in 12 minutes is insane).
c) even WITH the BIOS default, why doesn't ubuntu let the head park for an hour?
The excuse is, it's not our fault. That is horrible. By that logic power outages are not your fault, so you shouldn't use a journaling file system or have fsck, but have the drive irretrievably corrupt on power failures. This type of thinking will have Ubuntu out of the server room in no time flat.
What people are looking for in a distribution (and Ubuntu is apparently not providing) is one committed to making things work with the resources and technology available. Instead, we hear from Ubuntu that "it's not their fault".
Weak sauce. - ubuntudemon, on 11/03/2007, -1/+14to BigManOnCampus :
You don't seeing a high Load_Cycle_Count means that you haven't enabled laptop-mode (disabled by default), your BIOS isn't setting aggressive power management settings, your harddrive isn't setting aggressive power management settings. You are lucky but you can't generalize your experience to the experience of other people.
There are people who are reporting Load_Cycle_Counts which are increasing very fast. I have seen 17 spin-down/spin-up cycles within 12 minutes with my own harddrive. Some people are even reporting an increase of 4000 Load_Cycles per day.
These aggressive power management settings are set by your BIOS or harddrive firmware. Windows and/or Mac OS X might be overriding these settings which might make Ubuntu look bad if Ubuntu doesn’t override these settings. I’m a big fan of Ubuntu. I don’t want to see Ubuntu hurt because it’s not Ubuntu who is setting these aggressive power management defaults. - sexybobo, on 11/01/2007, -4/+17The default in ubuntu is to use the settings that were set in the BIOS or the HDD firmware. While windows Defaults to ignoring all settings and disabling all power management. In this situation Linux doesn't have to play the it's not our fault card because there is no error only software that is complying to standards.
- nights0223, on 11/02/2007, -4/+16I've seen many misuses of 'then' in place of 'than', but I've never seen 'than' used wrong like that.
As for not playing the "it's not their fault" card, you are almost always the first one to defend Microsoft, no matter what the problem is. - betterth, on 11/01/2007, -3/+14As clearly stated, major OSs like Windows and Mac OS are settings these values to be off. Wouldn't it be Ubuntu's fault for not setting them, when they are in the arena of OS's that are all setting them off?
Just curious. - LoudNoise, on 11/03/2007, -1/+11It's Ubuntu's fault that they trust the hardware manufacturers with their own hardware?
- stevedclarke, on 11/03/2007, -2/+10It is not the operating system's job to second guess your setup, and by extension you. Just because others do it doesn't make it right.
- sexybobo, on 11/03/2007, -0/+8B) there is no good reason to ignore user settings and use other settings. This can actually be beneficiary in a lot of instances. If some one wants to sacrifice part of the harddrives life for a dramatic increase in battery life they should be able to and your os should not ignore what you want and do things its way.
- geminitojanus, on 11/03/2007, -1/+9It's actually not a serious issue at all, it's extremely overblown because FUD is better than News. There have been ZERO reported cases of hardware failing. The only reported issue so far is that the drive's load count is increased (theoretically, you're running the clock on the hard drive's life. In reality, this isn't so much the case anymore). Lastly, hard disks today are covered under warranty for much longer periods of time than this; if this /were/ to cause a hard disk failure, you'd simply mail the disk to the manufacturer and get a new one. They can't spite you for it (you have a valid warranty, and you were using settings that /they themselves/ specified).
What it comes down to is someone found what they thought to be a bug, they reported it, and after not getting a response in what they thought would be a timely manner, they started fabricating statements that this was somehow "harming drives". If you don't believe me, don't take my word for it, read the reports yourself, they're all on Launchpad (and reference in the article). - cawpin, on 10/31/2007, -1/+7The only "good reason" Windows and OS X ignore the BIOS settings is that the average user is too stupid to know what they should be. The problem isn't Ubuntu. People see stories like this and may just learn something about how their computer works, and is SUPPOSED to work.
- Phate8263, on 11/03/2007, -4/+10Sheepness? Using an OS with maybe 3% of the desktop market? And you using windows I'm assuming... Perhaps you don't know what using the term sheep really implies.
- sexybobo, on 11/03/2007, -3/+9It is not harmful to the laptop. yes it makes the hard drive start to wear out quicker but it also has a lot of benefits such as dramatically increased battery life. And it is not Ubuntu's fault that it is standard compliant and windows isn't. Be honest though you would be pissed if you turned a setting on then Ubuntu ignored it. People are just use to microsoft screwing you that you get mad when someone gives you a choice.
- sexybobo, on 11/03/2007, -0/+6"If Windows/Mac are defaulting to override it -- wouldn't that be the best policy?"
No. If I decide to turn on something that will allow me to decrease power consumption at the cost of my hard drive wearing out quicker i should be able to. - geminitojanus, on 11/01/2007, -0/+6If a vendor says one thing, and other major software manufacturers are saying another, who do you trust, the people /making the device/ or the people who code on top of it? While having nice policies of "follow the leader" is okay, when the leader goes over the edge of a cliff, you have to start second guessing it. By default, Linux tries to follow what vendors specify because these are literally the people constructing the hardware. This is the /correct/ way of handling the situation (by extension, Mac OS X is vended by Apple, the same company making the decision, which means they should pretty much know what their settings should be).
Microsoft has screwed ACPI up so bad that /nobody/ can use it correctly other than themselves. - andycr512, on 11/03/2007, -2/+8It's amazing how trolls always seem to prove my point for me.
- andycr512, on 11/03/2007, -4/+9Perhaps you should get a clue. Ubuntu is doing -nothing- to cause this. This is an issue with hardware defaults.
Then again, anyone who can click your name and read your history will know you're nothing but a troll. - Coldkill, on 11/03/2007, -0/+5No you don't. You're an idiot troll. I doubt you even know a bit about Linux
- BigManOnCampus, on 11/02/2007, -5/+10I read that story and went and checked my load cycles to discover that after a year of using various versions of Ubuntu on my Laptop I haven't even used 10% of my Hard-Drive's life. It sounds to me like it was nothing but pure FUD. What made this FUD interesting was that people were pulling from public bug-lists to create it.
- geminitojanus, on 11/03/2007, -2/+7Futhermore, this software isn't even functional by default; Ubuntu ships it turned off because of specific bugs like this which take a lot of time do diagnose and weed out.
In other words, to even expose yourself to this "bug", you had to have manually done so, which gives you some idea of the risks involved. - stevedclarke, on 11/01/2007, -2/+6Yeah, whatever.
- stevedclarke, on 11/03/2007, -3/+7Why are you even in this thread? Seriously, go troll some Vista story or something.
- Skod, on 11/02/2007, -4/+8Wtf dude?
- SteveMax, on 11/03/2007, -1/+5"Ubuntu is doing -nothing- to cause this."
It's also doing -nothing- to prevent it from happening. If you see a person beating up a kid, do nothing about it (even though the beating lasts for hours, and you are a couple of meters from it), and the kid dies; won't the kid's parents blame you for doing nothing?
- Mr. Johnny New User install that Linux thing on his brand new laptop, after seeing all those cool effects on Mark's Ubuntu desktop.
- Johnny is on a laptop, so he turns on to "laptop mode". He thinks that this should be tuned for laptop usage, so it would be just right for him.
- Johnny really likes that Linux thing.
- Johnny's laptop drive fails after a few months.
- Johnny blames that Linux thing for ruining his computer. Now he hates it, and swears never to use it again.
- Mark tells Johnny that the problem was that his computer had very aggressive settings as default, and that Ubuntu just followed what his computer told it to do.
- Johnny tells Mark that her sister, Anne, bought the same computer at the same time. She uses Windows, and she never had a problem. So, the problem was Ubuntu.
- Mark insists that Windows is wrong and Ubuntu is right.
- Johnny finds out that he'd would rather have an OS that acts "wrong" and doesn't harm his computer than one that is "right" and breaks it. - reed311, on 10/31/2007, -2/+6Ubuntu is a not for profit operating system, you don't have to worry about it getting "hurt". Imagine the uproar if this was happening in Vista!
- Naidel, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3People like to whine.
- Disfnord, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
- sexybobo, on 10/31/2007, -1/+4Again their is no problem. Ubuntu doesn't ignore your settings like microsoft does and a lot of people like that fact. If having aggressive power management is bad for your pc they wouldn't have the option people like it though because it can dramaticily save battery life and many other options. To be honest I am more angry at microsoft now knowing they ignore the setting i select and use there own defaults instead of letting us use our computers the way we want to.
- mllawso, on 11/01/2007, -1/+4It's a conspiracy. The "Man" wants to keep us "Down," so he makes the firmware horribly inefficient for any 3rd party OSs.
- SteveMax, on 11/03/2007, -1/+4This is NOT a general Linux problem. This is the result of Ubuntu's current power design. Other distros don't show this problem. It's not a kernel bug, or even an application bug; it's a bug on Ubuntu's configuration.
- lsweet, on 11/01/2007, -0/+3I agree with estvir (on the first part anyway). I'm still using 'Windows' hard drives from 5 years ago. I've never had one fail nor have I ever known anyone to experience that many faulty drives (until now).
- lufthanza, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3All you people saying ubuntu should only allow sane settings can buzz off. If I want to turn off my laptop fans so that it becomes a space heater for my apartment then the OS better not get in my way! Same with if I want to rm -rf my root directory. In fact, I'm gonna do that right now! See you guys in h
- xspinkickx, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3you dont have to disable laptop mode, try reading the article and the orginal bug post. You can tell ubuntu to ignore the bios and hdd settings, and use something sane. Apparently non of you can seem to read. It never ceases to amaze me the level of retardation that occurs when people get infront of a computer.
- bgturk, on 11/02/2007, -2/+5When it is Ubuntu's fault or not, my hard-drive is dying when I am running Ubuntu, and Ubuntu has to do something to protect laptop users. I already lost one hard-drive because of this problem, and sorry but I cannot let that happen again, even more so when the problem reportedly does not exist under Fedora or Suse.
- Disfnord, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3No, he's one of those people who thinks he's cool by doing the opposite of whatever he think is popular. Windows is popular, use Linux, not for any technical merits but rather because it's obscure. Now that Ubuntu is starting to become popular, he has to rebel against that, not due to any technical merits, but because he thinks it makes him more "31337". He probably supports Bush now that Bush bashing is the norm.
- OrangeTide, on 11/01/2007, -0/+3as did yours.
- OrangeTide, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3Because when you give someone a free lunch, they want a free drink and free french fries to go with it.
- malkir, on 11/01/2007, -2/+5You guys just missed the hilarity of an anti-MS troll getting trolled by an anti-Linux troll.
- Disfnord, on 11/03/2007, -1/+4You have to admit, he does make a compelling argument. Oh, wait, he didn't make an argument at all...
- earlycj5, on 11/02/2007, -1/+3Interesting, I'd noticed that my computer was signifigantly faster and the CPU ran about 5-10* cooler with openSUSE than with Kubuntu Gutsy. Guess I may have a reason now.
- mabhatter, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2They should still patch to clarify the settings if anything else, so the system does what the user expects it to, it's about customer service better than the other guys. Shuttleworth should know that. On the other hand they are following the specs. There's a purpose to pointing blame at hardware makers. Much of Windows/Mac driver patches are really fixing deficiencies in hardware without telling you the customer it's broken. Ubuntu isn't privy to all these secret settings where the hardware is not performing to specs and they can't be responsible to work around other people's broken stuff.
It was on Digg a while back rumor that "large software company" was talking to OEMs about actively breaking power management on OS other than windows..... gee, see where that gets you... sounds like that's working here. - omnisync, on 10/31/2007, -0/+2I'm having the same problem with Vista, but only with my secondary SATA drive. Whatever the value for the HD timeout setting, my secondary disk will spin down after 5 seconds of non usage. When listening to music from that drive, it will spin up/down every few seconds. I "fixed" the problem by disabling HD power management altogether.
- toby666, on 11/02/2007, -1/+3and Ubuntu = GOD ....
and GOD = iphone
and iphone = substitute for having sex
waitaminute...does this mean...oh no...does this mean...Linus is not sexy? OMFG - andywebb95, on 10/31/2007, -0/+2I am looking forward to when solid state drives increase in capacity and decrease in price.
No more mechanical parts to worry about. - repawn, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2toby666 - traceroute is under system>administration>network tools - but since you cannot even use a simple menu system to figure that out I don't think it will matter all that much. Don't like Ubuntu - don't use it. No one is forcing you to use it.
- cynicist, on 11/01/2007, -0/+2The "problem" is that Ubuntu lets the hard drive decide what settings it should be using by default instead of choosing them like Windows does. Both the manufacturers and Ubuntu should be blamed, for not using appropriate defaults and for not checking to make sure the defaults are sane, respectively.
- reddfox321, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2Steve
Your argument is falling into the same realm as "Its Linux's fault that manufacturers don't make drivers for Linux".
If hardware companies are interested in their hardware working properly on a computer they should come with reasonable defaults. Period. Microsoft has been cleaning up these hard drive manufacturers' mess (yes, I'm impressed by that too) but its still not Microsoft's mess to clean. In the same respects it is also not Ubuntu's mess to clean. - OrangeTide, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2Do you feel better now? (the incoherent bits were hard to read)
On the bright side, at least you don't bottle up your anger and then go on a homicidal rampage. -
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