Created attachment 766711 [details] Power saving options disabled - the issue went away Description of problem: A 'click' is heard from my disk every few seconds along with (I'm not sure here) spinning up/down sound. The clicking coincides with in-game stutter in a game installed on the drive. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 3.9.4-200.fc18.x86_64 although I observed the issue at least 3 months back. How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. Connect the disk 2. Listen to clicking sounds and spin up/down sound Actual results: Clicking sound occurs every few seconds, 10 maybe. Spin up/down sound is heard. Expected results: No frequent clicking sounds, no frequent spin up/down sounds. Additional info: The issue goes away after I disable the power saving options in Gnome Disks as shown in the attachment. The same happens when the disk is connected as an external drive via USB (it's a Hitachi Touro external 2.5" HDD) as well as when the drive is taken out of the original enclosure and connected via Lenovo Thinkpad UltraBay (SATA).
The disk: Hitachi HTS547550A9E384 (JE3OA60A)
As far as I can tell, this is just userspace putting the drive to sleep via the power management settings. The clicking sound is likely the drive heads being parked. There isn't a lot the kernel can do here.
(In reply to Josh Boyer from comment #2) > As far as I can tell, this is just userspace putting the drive to sleep via > the power management settings. The clicking sound is likely the drive heads > being parked. There isn't a lot the kernel can do here. Likely it sure is. I think you're missing the fact that the disk spins up and down every 10 seconds or so. I'm not an expert on the matter but I think this could wear the disk out, or at least parts of it. I've marked 'kernel' as the package in question because the official bug reporting guidelines say - If you don't know the exact package, report the bug against suspected package. I expected the package to be changed, not the potentially harmful bug to be closed.
Isn't it related to this issue discovered recently? http://marc.info/?l=linux-usb&m=137714769606183&w=2
Recently I started using TLP for power saving. I've noticed that it reports the affected disk's APM level is some awkward value /dev/sdb: Model = Hitachi HTS547550A9E384 Firmware = JE3OA60A APM Level = 163 Status = active/idle scheduler = cfq According to http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-configuration.html there's no such value available for the setting. It also means that it doesn't honor the settings: /etc/default/tlp DISK_DEVICES="sda sdb" DISK_APM_LEVEL_ON_AC="254 254" DISK_APM_LEVEL_ON_BAT="128 128"
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I will no longer be able to test the issue on Fedora. The issue is well known and all has been said https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DanielHahler/Bug59695