Ubuntu

Ubuntu Jaunty HDD running hot

Asked by Elena09

I have Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 installed on my Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile V6545 laptop with WD3200BEVT-2 hard disk of 320GB.

1) While the AC adapter is plugged in, the temperature of Hard disk increases quickly from around 30Celsius degrees after booting to over 50 Celsius degrees, without any special applications running; even now, only Firefox is open and it is 50 Celsius degrees. There are no parking clicks heard. The command sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count shows that the number of cycles does not increase too much in an hour, very few cycles, below 5.

2) If AC adapter is unplugged and laptop is on batery only, the temperature decreases but I can here a parking click at each 3 or 4 seconds, annoying. Same command as above shows that the number of cycles is dramatically fast increasing. More than 12 per minute.

I put acpi=off but it didn't help, the temperature is still very high and no special software is running, which I can see with iotop command.
 acpi=off helps only with the second problem, no clicks can be heard now, either running on batery only or AC adapter plugged in, and the command from above shows number of cycles doesn't increase anymore for a long time .

What can I do in order to decrease the temperature and stop it increasing so fast while I use the AC power adapter?

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Vihar (vmankov) said : 		#1

I'm not sure but it sounds much more like hardware problem, not Ubuntu.
Does your laptop behaves in different way under different operation system, to say Windows?

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Elena09 (emailstudenti) said : 		#2

Thanks for answering but it didn't help.

I don't know how it behaves with other OS like Windows because Ubuntu 9.04 was the first and only installed OS.

If you want I could post pictures of the Bios. I didn't see there anything related to SATA except AHCI (have no idea if it should be enabled as it is now, or not).

I updated the Bios to its last version from Fujitsu site.

I have no idea what to do. Please give me a hint.

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Greg Eames (geames) said : 		#3

I work as a tech. I have only just moved my system over to Ubuntu from being a long time user of the various versions of Windows.

 To the best of my knowledge, excluding malware, there is nothing software ways that should be able to do that. If you have a friendly tech and you are not worried about warranties or such, then you can have them take the drive out and test it outside of the machine. Check to see if there is any conflict between the hardware and the drivers, maybe there is some conflict there. Other than that take it back and ask the manufacturer to check it for you.

I do not have a Fujitsu laptop but it does have a Fujitsu hard drive. I had a similar problem with a HP laptop recently. I ran all the test I could think off, both with drive in the machine and with it hooked up to over machines. I never did find out what was causing the problem but shortly afterwards the drive did stop working. Occasionally drives malfunction outof the box due to manufacturers defects.

Not much help here I am afraid.

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Jeruvy (jeruvy) said : 		#4

Well this really isn't a problem. It sounds like the HDD is running normally and not ABNORMALLY HOT, it certainly will not destroy anything running at 50 degree, if it pushed over 65 I'd be much more concerned about premature death due to overheating.

A laptop cooler would be a wise investment or replacing your HDD with a SDD would result in a cooler lap :)

Cheers.

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Elena09 (emailstudenti) said : 		#5

No Jeruvy, thanks. I've just bought my laptop and it was pretty expensive. Also, I strived to make everything work in Ubuntu jaunty. I want buy anything. If no one can help, I guess I'll remove this OS and try to find another.

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Jeruvy (jeruvy) said : 		#6

Ok, you may change the OS, but it will not change the operating temperatures of your hard disk. Now you could have a problem with an 'overactive' hard disk, and there have been bug's posted, but 50 degrees isn't a problem, it's quite normal. Just for example I've logged into my NAS and copied their status for you to see. The server room is only 15 degrees. If I was stuck in a tiny laptop in a normal room affected by sunlight and being used very hard by an OS, I'd be hotter.

sda 476939MB Sata1 45 C ONLINE
sdb 476941MB Sata2 42 C ONLINE
sdc 476941MB Sata3 43 C ONLINE
sdd 476941MB Sata4 44 C ONLINE

These are all idle atm..during backups they'll jump to 55 depending on how much I/O they generate. They will ONLY alert me to a problem when they climb above 60 degrees which is when I could start to experience problems.

Here's a thread on the forums about this too.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=75733

Now if there is possibility of a bug causing over-activity, then perhaps some investigation will lead to some issue, but I'd see this as a time waster myself. But your smartctl output above would not give me reason to be concerned. Of course you are welcome to conclude any opinion of mine you wish.

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Vihar (vmankov) said : 		#7

Elena, if there's a temperature report in your BIOS (at my desktop mine gives me the temperature of CPU only) you can try logging into BIOS and watching the temperature of the disk without laoding any OS.
It looks to me, like Jeruvy said, 50 of Celsius is not so high for a laptop. All those RPMs in so limited space...
You can just ask on the net the technical support of Fujitsu-Siemens if this temperature is too high.

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Elena09 (emailstudenti) said : 		#8

Thanks, but there is not a temperature report in my Bios, of any component of the laptop. This problem I have is related to one of the following: Bios, firmware, driver or OS (Ubuntu Jaunty). Do you know a command with which I could find what driver is used for the hard disk and what firmware?

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#9

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.