Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition
Cindy-Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com> writes:
> Self-incriminating admission: Me, too. :)
> My apologies that a reboot to test my memory and get specifics will...
> create too much upheaval just this second, BUT... in the last couple
> days, I saw something that I can't quite completely remember.
>
> Whatever I'm remembering is in BIOS. It was about a setting
> specifically related to the hard drives. It referenced older hard
> drives (am highlighting that to help nail down the right feature).
>
> One of that feature's settings was about letting the manufacturer's
> design within the hard drive itself have its own head to control
> things. I may be remembering wrong, but my take at that second was
> that it might have been about the drive spinning up and down AND that
> it was something standalone within that component. It was one of those
> "Wow, I had NO idea all THAT was going on inside those bricks". :D
>
> Seems reasonable to mention it here. My memory recall is that it might
> have been something about efficiency which is the feel I'm getting
> about this thread. I'd never heard of that BIOS setting nor seen it
> before. Whatever it was is an intended #toDo to dig up more details.
>
> Cindy :)
>
> PS I was just verifying Tibor's name (for the email address field)
> before sending and now see Alexander's reply. Maybe "Advanced Power
> Management " is what I saw if that's something's that completely
> within the hard drive and is something the hard drive can do by itself
> with no outside intervention.. AND is something that can be affected
> by a BIOS setting, to boot. :)
>
> Or not. :D
> --
> Cindy-Sue Causey
I think there are a couple of things, here. Depending
upon your BIOS, there are energy-saving settings that let the
hard drive motor spin down when there has been no disk activity
for some period of time. The down side of this is that it is
impossible to predict when there will be a need for the hard
drive so there is a guaranteed short hang as soon as a process on
your system needs file services whether it be a read or a write.
Let's say that you are logged in and have bash as your
login shell. Things are quiet and you press Return to generate a
shell prompt. You may hear the drive spin up and notice a bit of
sluggishness before you see the prompt. Hit Enter again and the
next prompt will appear much faster because the drive is already
spinning and it can check for new mail much faster because of
that. When you have a solid-state flash drive as your boot
drive, the drive is theoretically always spinning so you can
sometimes notice that those shell prompts come a lot faster even
if it was several minutes since your last activity because there
are no brief pauses while the drive is coming up.
If the short hangs due to the drive restarting are not a
problem, then use the energy-saving setting if you have it.
Now, for the mosquito noise. I have actually had several
hard drives do this and it is not a good thing but some do it for
years before things really go to pot. The platter spindle inside
has needle bearings that allow the disk stack to spin along at several
thousand RPM for ten or twenty years without trouble but
eventually, Father Time meets physics and a bearing gets a flat
spot or deformation on it. Every time the platter spins once, the
bearing, itself, spins many more times and if there is a bad
spot, it lightly catches every time it hits which gives a steady
whine to the drive.
While it may be good for another 5 or 10 years, it is a
warning that one day, it may ceize up and that's that right then
and there. Let's hope your backup was good and recent.
When these mechanical issues occur, stopping and
restarting the drive may make the whine go away but it comes
right back as soon as the spindle reaches normal speed and all
the forces that conspired to wear the needle bearings out allow
them to resume their previous not quite perfect rotation once
again.
In other words, that sound tells you that it may work 5
more minutes or 5 more years but the clock is ticking or whining
in this case.
I have opened up some of those old drives after tossing
them and you can actually feel the bearings stick slightly
several times for each rotation of the disk. It's amazing they
last as long as they do.
Martin McCormick
Reply to: