[piratesmack]

I own a 160GB Dell Mini 10v, and I recently noticed an annoying ticking sound coming from my hard drive.

From what I've read, it was shortening the life of my hard disk and smartctl showed that my Load_Cycle_Count was through the roof.

Not sure if any other Dell Mini owners are having this problem, but here's what fixed it for me:
WARNING: This will increase the risk of damaging your hard drive if your netbook is dropped, so use this only if you're sure you need it.

hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

Add that to your rc.local, etc if you need it.

If anyone has a better fix, please let me know.
Thanks

[reflex]

Thanks for the post. I'm already aware of the issue, but others might not be.

Here's a page discussing the issue and potential fixes/workarounds: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DanielHahler/Bug59695

It mentions adding the fix to resume scripts so that hdparm gets called after sleep, but that might not be necessary. It's also possible to keep the aggressive head parking enabled on battery for safety, while turning it down on AC for longevity. You can use "laptop-mode" or add hdparm calls to the power scripts.

[piratesmack]

Thanks for the link. I have come up with a script which I have set to run at boot, resume from suspend, and whenever the ac adapter is plugged in or unplugged. EDIT Seems some distros (At least Ubuntu and Knoppix) use something similar by default, but not Slackware