Problems: Seagate Momentus 500GB HD (7200.4)

The drive is the Seagate Momentus 500GB @ 7200RPM, my question is why does my laptop hard drive turn off randomly and by that I mean, I'll be typing and it'll stop spinning for about 1-2 seconds and then start spinning again. When it starts to spin again after this pause the computer freezes temporarily (like about a second). It happens rather erratically and throughout the day when I'm on the computer. Does anybody know why this occurs? Is this supposed to happen? I'm so completely baffled by this as this hasn't ever happened to me before when I used my original 120GB/7200RPM HDD.

Here's what I've done to the drive since I've had it:
- Cloned Original HDD (Windows Vista 32-Bit)
- Reformatted the C:\ Partition and Installed Windows 7 64-Bit
- Created Fresh Back Up for Windows 7 64-Bit
- Created a multiple partition to house Linux 11.04 64-Bit

I only used Linux rarely, I just wanted to try it out but it's good to have another OS just in case something happens to the original drive. However, this specific issue has been plaguing me before the Linux installation and to be frank, I don't think I've noticed this issue when I run Linux at all. What does this translate into?

 

It could be power management settings and the drive spinning down. Check your windows power management control panel.

If it doesn't happen in linux it may be from the setting there. For instance my laptop drive:

Code:

hdparm -B /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 APM_level	= 128

From the man page for hdparm:

For windows maybe check out quietHDD

 

just check in advanced power management settings and ensure that it isnt spinning down.

That could be why its doing it as windows is trying to put it to sleep and the HDD doesnt like it?

 

Thanks for the quick reply, I see, this is the current power settings I have:



It's set at 5 minutes and 20 minutes, should I change those figures? And more importantly, is that even the right place I should be looking?

Perhaps you can help me with another issue, after I installed Linux 11.04, my default boot turned into Linux, as in when the grub thing would pop up, I would have to select Windows 7 instead of just letting it go. Is there a way to change that?

It usually happens when I'm browsing the web or typing a document, perhaps I'm not using the HDD at that moment and it just turns it off? But then how come it comes back so quickly?

 

Yeah change that to more than 5 minutes, like an hour maybe or never (depends on your preference). Keep in mind that there is a different setting for each power profile (Power Saver in your screenshot).

For booting windows by default you just need to find the name of the windows item in your grub menu and then edit the grub config file.

To find the entry name for windows, open a terminal window and run this:

Code:

grep -i windows /boot/grub/grub.cfg

That should return many lines, one of which says something like 'Windows 7 loader on /dev/sda1' or similar. It's the part inside single quotation marks. I don't have windows on my machines but as an example this is the part in bold that you need to copy (except it will say windows ... obviously):

Code:

menuentry '[B]Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.0.0-rc3[/B]' --class debian --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {

So copy that part inside the single quotes by selecting it with your mouse and right clicking inside the terminal and select 'copy.'

Now open up the grub config file:

Code:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Find the line that begins with GRUB_DEFAULT it will probably be GRUB_DEFAULT=0

Change it to read like this, where the Windows 7 text inside the double quotes is what you paste in (copied earlier from the terminal):

Code:

GRUB_DEFAULT="Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1"

Now save the file and close your gedit window. Open a terminal window and update grub:

Code:

sudo update-grub

This way no matter what happens with your installed kernels and whatnot you will always have windows 7 as the default. There is an easier way to do it using the number instead of name, but if you install more kernels and the order of your boot list changes then your default can get changed. When you set GRUB_DEFAULT by name instead of number this won't happen. Good luck!

 

Thanks so much for the help, I appreciate it! Will this solve the hibernation issue I end up having with Windows 7? It normally won't let me hibernate, which perhaps a good thing in my case because I would never really shut-down.

 

I never let my laptop shut down anything when I'm on power lead.

to be honest I can't see why you would ever want the laptop to turn the HDD off even when on battery?

 

I'm not sure about the win7 hibernation problem, check event viewer for any clues. It could be a driver issue, or maybe you should run a SMART utility on your hard disk to make sure it doesn't have any warnings.

 

Have you updated the firmware?

Edit: Sorry, was thinking this was the XT model he was talking about that had this issue.

 

I don't know that was the default settings it came with, honestly, I'm not quite sure it's gone yet. But I have exams coming up in 2 weeks so I'll probably dedicate time to this afterwards.

Ever since I installed Linux 11.04, I've always ran into an issue with Hibernating when I'm on Windows 7. It won't hibernate for some reason, it'll just go to the log-in screen. Not sure as to why this does this, I thought you might've been able to enlighten me, but since I'm the only one with this issue, it's safe to say that it's an issue with me only and not something anyone else has run into.

Almost did, but I'm waiting on the Momentus XT (2nd Generation).

 

Maybe there is a problem with your hibernation file? Do you have enough free disk space to cover your entire RAM being dumped to HDD?