I used to have "clicking" issue on my thinkpad running Ubuntu 7.04/7.10. Basically I ignored the issue until I saw this article on /. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/30/1742258
Although the title and summary are wrong the issue is real. Great Job slashdot editors. Anyway head over here for better info http://mjg59.livejournal.com/77672.html The issue: In Laptop Mode, the drive power parameters are probably read from the Bios or the Drive Firmware. The default settings are really aggressive and your harddrive spins down within few minutes of idle time. Now, this issues props up in some harddrive makes and not in others. The test: If you have a S.M.A.R.T enabled harddrive(most newer harddrives do) install smartmontools. Under ubuntu: $ sudo apt-get install smartmontools or you can download the latest build it http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/ Once installed, $sudo smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sda | grep 193 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 47577 What you need to look for in the smartctl output is the Load Cycle Count. Monitor your Load cycle count over a period of time. Most drives can sustain 500000 to 600000 load cycles before you start seeing read/write errors, bad sectors etc. I was seeing 1 loadcycle every minute. My hard drive is around 2 months old and I already have around 47K Load/Unload cycles. Temporary Fix: For now, I have disabled APM for the harddrive. $sudo hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda This turns off the APM for the harddrive. I would suggest reading the comments section of slashdot article for more information. Karthik
