Re: Disk clicking and in increasing Load_Cycle_Count in laptop with debian/testing

[wzab <wzab@ise.pw.edu.pl>]

green wrote at Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:22:32 -0500
> wzab wrote at 2012-04-13 18:42 -0500:
>> A few weeks ago I've noticed, that my half year old laptop started
>> to behave strange.
>> When left unused, after the screen gets black to save power, the disks
>> starts to click every few minutes, and after each click the
>> Load_Cycle_Count (as reported by smartctl -a /dev/sda ) increases by
>> 1.
>
>You might want to look at the idle3-tools package and
>http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net

Well, I've downloaded the idle3-tools-0.9.1.tgz and compiled it.
The first test has shown:
# ./idle3ctl -g /dev/sda
Idle3 timer set to 80 (0x50)

So it seems that the idle3 timer is really set to 80 which according to the info in
the idle3ctl.8 it corresponds to 8 seconds!

However, before I decided to disable the idle3 timer, I wanted to verify,
that the problem still persists.
What's strange - today no continuous loading/unloading of heads takes place.
The conditions are the same as yesterday. Even yesterday I've restarted the machine 
(cycling the power off/on) after changes in /etc/hdparm.conf, and even with that
the Load_Cycle_Count was continuosly increasing.

Today it still the same, increasing by one only after power off/power on.
Of course I have waited until the rkhunter and updatedb finched their work
(as they kept the disk active).

So finally I'm giving up. I set the idle3 timer to disabled in the WD drive.
Switch the machine off and on (as described here: 
http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-351295/the-s-m-a-r-t-attribute-193-load-unload-counter-keeps-increa 
it is necessary to switch the machine off and on to really disable the idle3 timer 
after idle3ctl is used).
I also have the following added at the end of /etc/hdparm.conf:
/dev/sda {
        apm = 255
        apm_battery = 255
}

I hope it will allow my disks to survive next few years (curent count is: 282588 L_C_C 
after 3580 Power_on_hours and 1686 Power_on_Counts in Seagate ST9500420AS, 
and 97309 L_C_C after 1481 Power_on_hours and 692 Power_on_Counts in Western Digital
WDC WD7500BPKT-75PK4T0

Thanks a lot for all suggestions!
Wojtek