Recently I got preoccupied with the hard disc clicking sounds I have been hearing since I installed Arch Linux on my Asus 1201N. Anyway, I remembered that there was an issue that could dramatically reduce the life of the hard disc, then I looked up on Google and found this article [1]. I ran smartctl -A and noticed that each time I heard a click, one was added to Load_Cycle_Count. Then I ran hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda, but the Arch Wiki [2] says that it is best to set a smaller value, like 128, if you move your laptop a lot. The thing is, 128 keeps the hard disc spinning down a lot. In fact, 254 is quite noiseless, but as from 253 the clicking sound returns. I read this bug page [3] but found nothing new. It is worth remembering that, sometimes, when I'm watching a movie or TV show with mplayer, it stops for less than I second, then I hear the disc spinning faster and the video continues. So, how did you guys set the power manager with hdparm in your laptops? Does anybody else have this problem? Since I move my netbook often, should I set it to 128 even if it spins down more than four times a minute? Than you all. [1] http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking [2] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop#Hard_drive_spin_down_problem [3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pm-utils/+bug/361680 -- Rafael Beraldo http://cabaladada.org
