Ubuntu

HDD life expectancy

Asked by philip

I read somewhere on the internet that UBUNTU x.xx, (sorry, I cannot remember what version), "eats" laptop hard disk drives. Is this just a scaremongering gossip or what? It said something that a new HDD with UBUNTU x.xx to have a life expectancy of twelve to eighteen months before failure. Is this true? It said it is due to a bug in the ACPI.

I have an old laptop with a 6.4GB HDD that has SARGE 3.1 installed and another with 20GB HDD with Windows NT4 and XPpro. If this is true, would all O/S's treat the HDD the same? New 20GB laptop HDD's are rare, so I guess I am going to find out what the largest capacity HDD I can fit and buy an unlimited supply!

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Hans Spaans (hspaans) said : 		#1

Could you please post the link to that story.

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A. Denton (aquina) said : 		#2

Hy philip!

I'm a german comuter science student. Don't worry about that I'll try to give you an answer as preciese and understandable as possible.

First of all no OS ever "ate" HDDs since thats not a task which OSes have to fulfill. ;-) I think the real gossip about that story is that someone assumed ANY version of *Ubuntu would have an influence on a HDD's life-tme. Let me say that HDD vendors provide customers with detailed information about their HDD's MTBF (mean time between failures) which is typically around 100 thousand hours. Calculate on your own how long it (statistically) takes to cause JUST ONE error when running your system 12 hrs a day. Furthermore I assume you're not running a hyper-dyper Unix server cluster with some sophisticated mass storage array consisting out of drives with special data, scecial file system, etc on them. Under these circumstances heavy load my cause early damage to disks.

Ultimately there is no such ACPI error known by us. A worst case scenario when running a drive is connecting an disconnecting it from the power supply very often in a (short) period of time (e.g. 30 times a day for two years or so...) and NOT running it in a reasonable manner. Don't buy an unlimited HDD supply and forget about 20Gb HDD's since their cost benefit is not the best anymore! Also do backups REGULARLY and EXTERNALLY and VERIFY them. Your HDD is going to fail, but more likely by aging -- which it absolutely normal. ;-))

- Aquina

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philip rogers (progers-mailcan) said : 		#3

Here's a link to the story:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/31/ubuntu-eats-lappy-hard-drive

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Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#4

Hi philip,
the bug #59695, which is also mentioned in your link above, describes very well the issue, workarounds and status of development.
Another question regarding the issue is here
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/38043

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A. Denton (aquina) said : 		#5

I don't know how they calculted theses 1.1 years. Just forget about it...

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A. Denton (aquina) said : 		#6

Unfortunately I do not have the powers to change the state of this question to SOLVED, EXPIRED or INVALID. Someone here at Launchpad either grant me that permission or simply apply the change in state to this question, please.

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