[sf-lug] semi-OT: help with dying disk

[matt.price at utoronto.ca]

went out of town unexpectedly, following up!

Quoting Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>:

> Quoting matt.price at utoronto.ca (matt.price at utoronto.ca):
>
>> the hard drive in my laptop is dying, with messages of this ilk:
> [...]
>>    so as regards recovery
>
> See, I'd not actually heard of GNU ddrescue, so hats off to Asheesh, for
> suggesting it.

ditto that!  worked great.

>
>> then i have a second one, regarding a new disk.  from the looks of it,
>> $150 will now buy either 200 gigs of 7200 RPM  2.5" disk, or 250 gigs
>> of 5400 RPM.  any idea how the speed difference is likely to affect
>> both speed and power consumption on my laptop?
>
> Well, quite seriously, at least potentially.  Mutatis mutandis, a drive
> that spins 33% faster will draw about that much more power and put out
> that much more heat.  OTOH, speed ratings of laptop hard drives (exactly
> as with so-called "48x" CD drives) are a bit misleading, because of
> measures to keep them spun down a high percentage of the time.

right.  see my answer below, i'm thinking i'll go with the slower drive.
>
>> this is a dell d820  laptop with a core duo cpu, so it's fairly quick
>> by my standards, but  of course i wouldn't mind it being faster;
>> however, it's also a  terrible power hog under linux, currently (with
>> what i believe is a  5400 rpm disk) barely staying up for an hour on
>> battery power.
>
> Gee, you might, at that sort of battery duration, want to check with
> other d8x0 users running Linux, because that sounds awfully slim.  Maybe
> you might even need a new battery?  Lithium ion cells do lose their
> capacity progressively over the years, whether you use them or not.
> The only cure, really, is to buy a replacement battery.

yes, my battery is damaged.  i'd never had one go so quickly, and i  
htought i'd been pretty good about the power sycle;  just oges to show  
though.  but even with a good pattery the runtime is very short.
>
>
>> so i wondered, any comments on the likely speed/power tradeoff, and
>> also any hints about increasing disk lifetime?
>
> One factor that feeds into disk lifetime is heat.  As long as your
> system is able to conduct or convect any generated heat away quickly
> enough, no problem (although it's of course better to not generate that
> heat in the first place, if you can avoid doing so).  However, if your
> fans and fins aren't keeping up for some reason (hot day, blocked heat
> vents, etc.), then you get runaway conditions -- heat buildup.
>
> Heat buildup kills electronic components, and especially those on hard
> drives, more surely than just about anything else can.
>
well, my machine runs INCREDIBLY hot, so i suppose that's the answer.   
it's gotten to the point where, if i want to watch a movie, i get an  
icepack out of the freezer first.  i don't even really know how to  
diagnose this -- shouldn't some kind of temperature control be kicking  
in?  can i tell what's generating al lthe heat somehow?  but i've  
definitely been aware of the problem for a while -- tried to get some  
feedback from the ubuntu lists about a year ago but got no responses,  
iirc, and haven't dealt with it efficaciously since then.


> You'll notice that I haven't given you any easy, clean, bankable answers
> in the above.  To my knowledge, there aren't any -- just a bunch of
> general principles that might or might not help you over the long run.
>
oh sure, take the high road on thisone!  thanks for hte advice, though  
-- it's probably more helpful than you realize, e.g., i've made a  
decision already based on it...

matt

>
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