Laptop Hard disks are (gonna be) seriously broken / discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Laptop Hard disks are (gonna be) seriously broken.

HDD turn off & power options in Vista

sAgar (guest) 1240550517|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Very interesting post. Looked around for expert opinions, but turns out the experts don't agree on anything, as usual.

I keep the power setting on my Dell (insprion 1525) Vista laptop to 'Power Saver' (which by default favours battery life over performance; yes yes, I know 'Vista Performance' is an oxymoron).

A quick check (via 'Control Panel' -> 'Power options' -> 'Change plan settings') indicates that the HDDs are turned off auto, after 5 minutes of inactivity when on battery and after 20 minutes when plugged in.

I'll scout for the equivalent of 'smartctl' for Vista and compare with your results. (If smartctl's results are not from the OS, but directly from the disk controller, I can boot my box into linux and run the same).

hrj 1240551373|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

@sAgar
Hmm.. Vista's setting to turn it off after 5 mins of inactivity is not too bad.

Back of the envelope calculation, for worst case, is 100k reloads per year. Which means, even in the worst case, you might get about 6 years of HDD life.

But, that's only in software, check the actual hardware setting thus:
hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep "Advanced power management level"

smartctl indeed reads data off the disk controller (a SMART disk controller).

last edited on 1240551554|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by hrj + show more

Vista wearing down the HD lesser(?)

sAgar (guest) 1240551685|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

For my LT, smartctl (Windoze version) reports, among others:

Start_Stop_Count: 979
Power_On_Hours: 1184
Power_Cycle_Count: 674
Power-Off_Retract_Count: 282
Load_Cycle_Count: 34405 (that's a tenth of the value you see for your box)

YMMV ofcourse, especially if you have a different power option or have customised the power options. I am on 'Power Saver' for my inspiron 1525.

Re: Vista wearing down the HD lesser(?)

hrj 1240568741|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

You are indeed better off, sAgar, congratulations! (To be sure, the absolute numbers can't be compared, as it depends on the individual HDD's max rating for reloads).

Your reloads per hour are (33405 / 1184.0) = ~ 30

Mine are 343830 / 3409.0 = ~ 100

Aside, I don' t think this should be colored as a vista v/s linux game, because the HDD manufacturer's power management features would also matter. To compare OSes we would have to use the same h/w for benchmarking (and under similar work loads, if you woke up pedantic today :-) ).