Gavin Cameron wrote:
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the quick reply ... comments below.
Robert Hancock wrote:
Gavin Cameron wrote:
Hi,
It's been a while since I've been in touch. I previously had 2 problems:
1. PATA DVD writer not working
2. Frequent HDD head unloads
I eventually caved in and replaced the PATA DVD drive with a SATA and
that works perfectly. However, this head unloading is really annoying
primarily because the noise the drives makes just doens't sound
healthy - it's a high pitch squeal and then a couple of clicks.
Can you tell which drive is doing it? I'm assuming it's not both.. If
you can figure out which one you can try some different APM values to
see if that helps anything. You could also try disabling the standby
timer in case that's doing it, with "hdparm -S 0".
If none of those help, there may not be a lot else you can do about
it. The OS really has no control over when the drive decides to
unload, other than those settings..
I can't be sure which drive is making the noise - it may be hard to find
out as one drive is the root file system and the other is /home so both
are normally needed (unless I do a bit of hacking). The noise is the
same every time, so it may be just one of them. As it happens, /dev/sdb
(the drive allocated to /home) is the older of the two drives.
The unloading itself is very predominant within the first 15 minutes of
the PC being powered - happening between 1 and 3 times a minute.
However, eventually it decreases to perhaps once every half hour. It
often happens twice in succession too.
Can you try doing smartctl -a on both drives before and after you hear
the noise and see if it seems to match up with any of the counters changing?
I've tried the following with no success:
sudo hdparm -S 0 /dev/sda
sudo hdparm -S 0 /dev/sdb
sudo /sbin/hdparm -B 253 /dev/sda
sudo /sbin/hdparm -B 253 /dev/sdb
sudo /sbin/hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda
sudo /sbin/hdparm -B 128 /dev/sdb
( as well as 254 and 255)
I know you're saying that there's not much else can be done from an OS
point of view, however ... this particular PC didn't make this noise
until kernel 2.6.19 (I think it was) that started using libata. Also,
it's a dual boot machine (although I hate admitting that to people - but
still need it for gadget firmware updates) ... and when it runs XP, the
drives never make a noise. Not that I'm trying to say that Windows is
any good for anything ... it's just an observation.
There was also the previous problem with the PATA DVD drive not working.
So I still believe that the libata kernel module has some problems with
this chip set (perhaps combined with particular drive usage, I'm not sure).
Hopefully, there may be some other file or command output that I can
provide to you that will help to diagnose this. If so, please let me
know and I'll gladly provide it :-)
Best regards,
Gavin.
Anyway, a reminder of the basic system:
* ASUS M2V M/B (VIA K8T890 / VIA VT8237A chipset)
* AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
* SATA LiteOn DVD RAM/RW
* Ubuntu 9.04 (Beta) - kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
Since I last was in touch, I've converted the system to Ubuntu (I was
hoping that it was a Fedora quirk) with no change in head unloads
with either 8.10 or 9.04.
I've tried the following in /etc/rc.local :
/sbin/hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
/sbin/hdparm -B 254 /dev/sdb
Which makes no difference at all. Also, I tried setting 255, but that
also had no affect.
I've included all of the normal files that I think you may need:
sudo dmidecode > dmidecode.txt
sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda > hdparm-sda.txt
sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdb > hdparm-sdb.txt
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda > smartctl-sda.txt
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb > smartctl-sdb.txt
lsmod > lsmod.txt
Hopefully you can find the root of the problem.
Best regards,
Gavin.
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