[plug] Ubuntu killed my drive!

[Brad Campbell]

Well, probably contributed anyway.

My little Vaio had a major hard disk failure after roughly 2 years of faithful service.
It was a general mechanical wear type of failure as the old freezer allowed me to recover all of the 
data perfectly well, but at room temperature it was just a "clickety click"..

A quick post-mortem revealed over 1,200,000 head load/unload cycles where the drive is rated to 
about 600,000.

Drive duly replaced, I'll be implementing some of the recommended workarounds listed in the various 
Ubuntu forums for overzealous power saving modes for hard disks..
Example : https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695/comments/81

<grumble>..

Brad
-- 
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability
to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable
for their apparent disinclination to do so." -- Douglas Adams