Comment 102 for bug 67810

System: IBM Thinkpad R40.
Hard drive: Hitachi Travelstar 80GN, Model Number: IC25N040ATMR04. It's a PATA drive.

I observed this noise for the first time in Ubuntu 7.04. I had no such problems with 6.06 or 6.10. Martin Koßler's workaround works fine.

I'd like to cite from <http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/85CC1FF9F3F11FE187256C4F0052E6B6/$file/80GNSpec2.0.pdf>:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Emergency unload is intended to be invoked in rare situations. Because
this operation is inherently uncontrolled, it is more mechanically
stressful than a normal unload. A single emergency unload operation is
more stressful than 100 normal unloads. Use of emergency unload
reduces the start/stop life of the drive at a rate at least 100 times
faster than that of normal unload and may damage the drive.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Is that what happens without Martin's patch? If so, it doesn't sound too good ...

I guess the "Power-Off_Retract_Count" that one gets with "sudo smartctl --device=ata --attributes /dev/sda" tells how often the hard drive has gone through an emergency unload. Can somebody confirm that? The "Power-Off_Retract_Count" of my drive is 14, and I think that number would make sense.