ThinkWiki - User contributions [en]

Problem with hard drive clicking

2010-06-18T14:00:50Z

Clange: /* Seagate Momentus 7200.1 and 7200.3 */ fixing link into seagate forum

Many users have reported a '''problem with hard drive clicking''', sometimes described as a repeating '''tick tick tick''' type of ticking sound.
The [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K80]] series which shipped with many T series Thinkpads in particular is reported to suffer from this problem. The clicks occur rapidly, and are quiet but noticeable. While in use in a quiet environment the clicks can be relatively loud and very irritating to some users. The clicks seem to happen when the drive is idle and the power has been on for a significant period of time. The clicking is also reported on other vendor's laptop hard drives too and is therefore almost certainly a hard drive related rather than a laptop chassis related.

The clicking sound appears to only occur when the drive is idle. Forcing the drive to be busy silences the ticking while the drive is busy. Launching programs that access the hard drive such as searching or defragmenting the drive helps for a time. Cycling the power on the hard drive such as through a full power off reboot of the system stops the ticking for the moment and has been used as a temporary solution. Also see use of hdparm for another way to reset the drive without a power off reboot.

Others recommend using Hitachi's drive feature tool to increase the acoustic management level, and/or set power management settings.

===Possible Cause and Speculation===

Laptop drives (especially Hitachi [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K80]], [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K100]] and SAMSUNG MP0804H) can unload heads very often, and they can produce a noticeable click when doing that. Some ThinkPad BIOSes can be very eager to program the HD Advanced Power Management feature (hdparm -B) even when told to always keep the HD in "Maximum Performance mode" and will do so every time AC state changes, and when coming out of suspend (be it S3 or S4). Unless you reset the HD's APM mode, it will unload its heads eventually thus producing the clicks.

Another proposed possible cause is the drive firmware running a low level surface media check periodically during drive idle time.

It is not known whether the problem is a sign of impending drive failure. The root cause of the problem is not yet known. It is quite likely to be a normal mode of drive operation. The problem is very prevalent.

Do not confuse this with regular activity. Many daemons poll (config) files every few seconds. Despite files being cached, POSIX-compliant filesystems like ext2 or ext3 must update (=write) the last access time. More details and workaround in [[How to reduce power consumption#Hard_Drives]].

===Tracking down the cause of the clicks===

Using "'''smartctl -A'''" (part of the the [http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki smartmontools] package), it is possible to check if any of the drive's attributes related to platter spin-up/down or head unload are increasing when a click is heard.
That can help pinpointing the cause of the clicks.

A shell script like this may help:
<pre>#!/bin/bash
lastval=0
while :
do
newval=`smartctl -A /dev/sda | awk '$2=="Load_Cycle_Count" {print $10}'`
if [[ $newval != $lastval ]] # i.e. anything has changed (here: load cycle count only)
then
date
echo $newval
fi
lastval=$newval
sleep 30 # or some other interval
done
</pre>

===Possible Solution (Windows)===

On X41T, do bios, firmware and IBM updates.
Then simply disable the ShockProtection of the HardDrive.
On a native X41T windows installation it solved the problems, you will hear a click every hour.
Seems that the problem is related to an aggressive setting that will try to park the head often to protect the drive, so the problem is not related with power management settings, perhaps a similar approach works also under linux.
WBonX (Hitachi drive)

===Possible solution (Linux)===

Temporary relief has been seen by using '''hdparm''' to reset the drive. But note the warning in the hdparm man page indicating that it is a dangerous operation. This is very likely due to the possibility of losing data in the write cache not yet stored to the hard drive. This would be dependent upon the particular hard drive. When used in the following to stop the clicking I have not seen any data loss. YMMV.

# hdparm /dev/hda
# sync
# sleep 5
# sync
# hdparm -w /dev/hda

The clicking noise apparently occurs when the drive is parking its heads (and ramping them off the drive surface in the process) after a timeout after the last disk access. Try turning off power management for the drive; that should stop the drive from parking the heads except when turning off:

# hdparm -B 255 /dev/hda

You can also try

# hdparm -B 254 /dev/hda

which doesn't turn power management off, but is the least agressive setting: it will still unload heads, but far less often. The drives '''are''' prepared to withstand a great number of head unloads (200k unloads are typical, Hitachi drives tolerate about 600k unloads).

These commands have immediate effect, and need to be re-issued at every boot, after resuming from disk or RAM, and after hotswapping. '''You have to reissue the -B commands every time the ThinkPad BIOS might have tried to override them'''. In Ubuntu this can be done by creating an executable file named 00DISK in /etc/pm/sleep.d with the following content (as root):
<pre>
#!/bin/sh
# Use a less aggressiv hard disk power management in order to get
# rid of clicking noise which occurs when the drive is parking its heads

. "${PM_FUNCTIONS}"

case "$1" in
thaw|resume)
hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
;;
*)
;;
esac

exit $NA
</pre>

If the above does not help but manually setting hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda does, it helps to add "sleep 2" one
line above hdparm. In Ubuntu 8.10 (Linux Mint 6) on a T42 there seems to be something else setting a lower value
in battery mode which might be coming from the BIOS because it clicks during boot and stops with this in place.

===Specific models===

====Hitachi C4K60 (HTC426060G9AT00)====

On a Thinkpad X41 with a has a 60GB Hitachi C4K60 (HTC426060G9AT00) hard-disk that had the clicking problem (even in Windows), the hdparm solution above did not work. The problem was indeed caused by the hard-disk unloading the heads when idle, and the Load_Cycle_Count SMART statistic could be seen increasing when the clicks occurred.

hdparm -B settings did not seem to help, and a check of the harddrives specs (available in [http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Travelstar_C4K60 hitachigst.com]) verified that setting the APM mode off (hdparm -B 255) would set it actually to the lowest APM mode (the same as hdparm -B 254). In this drive, even the lowest APM mode unloads the heads very aggressively causing the clicking sounds. Another problem is that the drive is rated only for 600000 unload/load cycles, which means that the drive will break in at most a couple of years.

{{NOTE|This observation is only about the specific model (Hitachi C4K60), and is not true for more recent Hitachi drives, which do disable APM with -B 255.}}

====Samsung MP0804H 80GB====

On this drive, the ''clicking noise'' can be immediately stopped just by enabling ''automatic offline tests'' using
# smartctl -o on /dev/hda
Even more strange is that SMART wasn't enabled by default, although the drive supports it.

The drive had already performed 15.539 load cycles (out of 600.000) within only one week.

Note that enabling SMART (-s on) without enabling ''offline tests'' -- which is what I did immediately after observing the ''clicks'' -- did not solve the problem, but made it quite clear that the drive was ''badly in need of some care''.

==== Seagate Momentus 7200.1 and 7200.3====
Reportet in X61t and X61 (I have a ST9320421AS)

On these drives, each click does indeed correspond to an increase in SMART attribute 193, "193 Load_Cycle_Count", as you can see by doing a
# smartctl -A /dev/sda

before and after a click.

It seems like the problem is that the default powersaving mode for the drive is one which causes clicking. In fact, executing
# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
(which is supposed to turn off power management) actually leaves power management on, and is equivalent to
# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda

as you can see by comparing the results of
# hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

This may or may not be related to something else strange; the drive reports that the Advanced power management level is 0x8000 more than what you set it to, presumably leading hdparm to report that it is always set to "unknown setting" (since the number should be between 1 and 255). FYI the results of the above sequence of commands is:

# hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0x01 (1)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8001)
* Advanced Power Management feature set

# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0x80 (128)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8080)
* Advanced Power Management feature set

# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x80fe)
* Advanced Power Management feature set

# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to disabled
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8080)
Advanced Power Management feature set

The workaround seems to be to execute
# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

So it seems like the drive is interpreting "hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda", which I'm guessing is the default (and which is supposed to be NOT powersaving mode) as a request to go into powersaving mode, which causes it to spin down alot and to and click. And I'm guessing that "hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda" actually takes it out of powersaving mode.

Somewhat annoying because
# smartctl -A /dev/sda
shows that I have already accumulated a Load_Cycle_Count 106680 after owning the laptop for just a few weeks! I'm not sure that I understand this stuff, but if this corresponds to "Load/Unload Cycles" in http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_momentus7200.pdf, then that's more than 1/6 of the drive's lifetime!

I can confirm that after having my drive for about 5 days now, the 193 cycle count is already at 3000 and its steadily increasing. That is really annoying. Unfortunately changing the powersave mode on my drive (ST9320421AS) only brakes my hibernate capability (the laptop resumes immediately) but it wont stop the clicking, instead it will increase it.

===== Firmware Upgrade =====

While no firmware update was found direct from IBM/Lenovo, Dell support offers a firmware update for a nearly-identical Seagate drive model. In at least in two cases (model T500, 7200.3; model Z61m 7200.3), the firmware update eliminated the clicking issue. Details available from this <s>[http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=2677&view=by_date_ascending&page=2 Seagate Thread]</s> [http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/CLICKING-NOISE-ISSUE-on-Momentus-7200-3-ST9320421AS-320GB/m-p/12498#M78 Seagate Thread (version that works, maybe they have restructured their forum)] or [http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking here (for ST9160411ASG)]

==== [http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=HardDrivesOpticalDrives/2.5-inchHardDiskDrives/MK2035GSS/MK2035GSSSpecifications Toshiba MK2035GSS] ====

Issue happens with "laptop mode" disabled. BIOS is an "AMIBIOS 8.00.14", and the chipset is "Mobile Intel GM965 Express".

I can solve the problem with the hdparm workaround, the lowest value that makes the trick for me is:
# sudo hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda

===Firmware upgrades===

There are two HD firmware upgrades on Lenovo's support website. One is specific to X41's, and will upgrade Hitachi's to Release A0L0 (document [http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-67238 MIGR-67238], 2007/01/24). The upgrade comes in three forms: diskette, windows executable or ISO CD-ROM image.
IBM's latest posted firmware, A5DA, does not appear to solve the problem.

A newer upgrade set ([http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-62282 MIGR-62282], 2007/05/02) updates HD firmwares of several brands, including Hitachi. The patch upgrades firmware for HTC4260xxG9AT00 to A0L2 (according to program output, from 00P3A0B5 to 00P3A0L2). The upgrade comes in a large (20 MB) ISO format, or as several diskettes. There is seemingly no windows executable; therefore upgrading a diskless machine can be problematic (it involves making a DOS-based USB bootable drive).

The upgrade caused one X41 Tablet HTC426060G9AT00 drive to stop clicking.

===Another Possible Solution===

IBM, when notified about this occurrence, may replace the drive with a Fujitsu 5k 80GB hard drive, as to them the sound is indicative of a potential hard drive failure.

===Data Recovery Service===

In many cases, a software solution would not solve a problem with a clicking hard drive caused by a defective head disk assembly (HDA) or a firmware issue. Consider using an expert data recovery service such as [http://www.WeRecoverData.com WeRecoverData.com Data Recovery Labs]

==External links==
*Ubuntu reported bugs: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695 59695] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/104535 104535]
*[http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Downloads] - The drive feature tool may help with this problem.
*[http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=7462 Thread on thinkpads.com]
*[http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=46058 Thread on notebookforums.com]
*[http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?p=143203 Thread on silentpcreview.com]
*[http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15769 Another Thread on thinkpads.com]
*[http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=28538&whichpage=1 Thread on tabletpcbuzz.com]
*[http://thinkpad-forum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2255 German Thread on thinkpad-forum.de (Containing an interesting remark about a possible problem with the Cache)]
*[http://www.werecoverdata.com Data Recovery Service - WeRecoverData.com Data Recovery Labs]
[[Category:T40]] [[Category:T41]] [[Category:T42]] [[Category:T43]] [[Category:X41]] [[Category:G41]]

Installing Gentoo 2007.0 on a ThinkPad R61

2008-01-24T16:59:19Z

Clange: /* Thinklight */ fixed but in script

== Model ==
Lenovo Thinkpad {{R61}} 7743-Y1B

== General ==
This installation instruction describes the steps after a Gentoo 2007.0 base installation.
Please read the gentoo handbook for installation instructions

====Working:====

* Keyboard, UltraNav input (Touchpad and NavPoint)
* Drives
* X11 with nVidia including acceleration
* Network, wireless network and bluetooth
* Sound
* Suspend to RAM
* ThinkLight
* PCMCIA
* ACPI (Battery, CPU Frequency, Fan, Temperature, ...)
* Fingerprint scanner (includes login and screen lock)
* Fn Key combinations
* Hot swapping of optical drive (UltraBay)
* HDD Acceleration Meter (can be used as an input device)

====Not tested:====

* Firewire (should work as it is recognized, no devices for testing)
* Suspend to disk (hibernate)
* Express Card Slot (should work)
* Harddisk protection (should work with patching)
* Docking Station (should work according to several sources)

== Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M ==

To install and configure the nVidia driver, just emerge nvidia-driver.
Tested with nvidia-driver-100.14.19, everything works fine, games run smooth.

Framebuffer works fine with vga=869 which will set the resolution to 1440x900.
hwinfo --framebufer displays all supported resolutions.

The brightness can be changed with the new nvidia driver
(169.04) which is a beta driver at the moment.
Does not work with older drivers, only known workaround
is to either use vesa / nv driver or to change the
brightness on a vt.

== Sound: AD1984 ==
Did not work with older Versions of ALSA driver, works fine with ALSA 1.0.15 and should work
with ALSA 1.0.14 as well. The in-kernel ALSA works since 2.6.23.

The mute button is hardwired and works, the volume up and volume down buttons
work as well but you need to configure them first.

Note: After muting you have to press a volume up or down button to unmute,
and the mute status is not displayed in any mixer application.

== Network: Intel E1000 NIC, IPW4965abgn WNIC, Bluetooth==

The integrated e1000 LAN NIC works out of the box.

For wireless you have to unmask and emerge the iwlwifi package
with the ipw4965 USEFlag enabled.

Don't forget that the interface (wlan0) has to be set as up
(ifconfig wlan0 up) before scanning and associating works.

Bluetooth works out of the box with blueZ.
You can disable / enable bluetooth via proc,
with a script similar to this one:

<bash>
#!/bin/sh
bluetooth=`head -n 1 /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth | awk '{print $2}'`
case "$bluetooth" in
disabled)
sudo sh -c "echo "enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth"
;;
enabled)
sudo sh -c "echo "disable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth"
;;
esac
exit 0
</bash>

or directly with the proc interface. This script helps you
to bind it to the Fn+F5 key combination.

Note that the hardware killswitch on the front works as well,
but disables both bluetooth and WLAN

== Ports: PCMCIA, USB, IEEE 1394 Firewire ==

PCMCIA port works out of the box, tested with an audigy pcmcia.
I have no express slot cards available for testing.

The left hand usb ports generate an IRQ nobody cared error from time to time,
Try to boot with irqpoll in your kernel line as suggested.

A BIOS Update might help as well, it is recommended to use the
ThinkVantage Software Updater for windows for a BIOS Update.
The error disappeared here and USB works fine.

Firewire is untested but should work, as the port is
recognized and the module loaded.

== Drives ==

The optical drive and hard drive work out of the box,
at least with AHCI disabled in the BIOS.

If you run a dualboot system with windows <= 5.1 (XP) you want to disable AHCI anyway.

== Input ==

=== TouchPad ===
Works out of the box here, with scrolling.
Have a look at my Xorg.conf section at the end

Can be disabled via synclient when using the synaptics driver,
a possible solution is this script:

<bash>
#!/bin/sh
touchpad=`synclient -l | grep TouchpadOff | awk '{print $3}'`
case "$touchpad" in
1)
synclient TouchpadOff=0;
echo "Touchpad Enabled" | osd_cat -d 1 -c cyan --font="-*-times-bold-r-*--34-240-*-*-p-*-*-*" -A center -p bottom
;;
0)
synclient TouchpadOff=1;
echo "Touchpad Disabled" | osd_cat -d 1 -c cyan --font="-*-times-bold-r-*--34-240-*-*-p-*-*-*" -A center -p bottom
;;
esac
exit 0
</bash>

which needs xosd to display the current state.
You can make it excecutable and map it to the fn+f8 button.

=== Trackpoint ===
Works out of the box as well, with no scrolling however.
Can be configured via xorg.conf, I prefer using the middle button as mouse3.

=== Keyboard ===
Works out of the box, most of the Fn Keys work.

Hardwired: Mute, Thinklight, Brightness

Generates a keycode and can be configured: Volume Down, Volume Up, Fn+F2, Fn+F3, Fn+F4, Fn+F5, Fn+F7, Fn+F8, Fn+Arrows

Does not generate a key event: Fn+F9, Fn+F12, Fn+Space
Those keys do produce an acpi event, so you can modifiy your
acpi configuration to bind them to commands.

It is also possible to translate the acpi events to keyevents, have a look at the following configuration file:

[[Installing_Gentoo_2007.0_on_a_ThinkPad_R61#default.sh_.28acpid.29|My example default.sh file for the missing keys is here]]
and there is a good, more complete howto
here: [http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Lenovo_Thinkpad_T61#Usage_of_acpid Gentoo Wiki]

Try whether echo "0xffffffff" > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey
enables additional fn+fx keys to produce a key event
instead of only an acpi event.

== Power Management ==
Suspend to RAM worked out of the box here, echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep
puts the machine in suspend mode, opening it or pressing the power button wakes it up.
Worked with nvidia driver and in X11. All devices came back without problems,
wlan might have disconnected, but by using networkmanager, wicd or a good configuration
it should reconnect after waking up. Works here with wicd.

== Integrated Fingerprint Reader ==
Emerge the thinkfinger package, add a user with the tf-tool.
Then you have to edit the /etc/pam.d/system-auth file by adding

auth sufficient pam_thinkfinger.so

between pam.unix and pam.env.

Read the Gentoo-Wiki to use it with xscreensaver,
there is a good solution over [http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Thinkfinger there]

Note: kdm has problems with thinkfinger auth and might crash.
There are patches, but I didn't test them yet. gdm works fine here.

== Hard Drive Active Protection ==

The integrated harddrive active protection
acceleration meter can be used as a joystick or
to get information about movements of your thinkpad.

Emerge the hdapsd (which includes a kernel module
you have to load) which will generate a joystick
and an event device.

It could as well be used to protect your harddisk
from damage, but I have not tested this and I wont,
as I can't be arsed to use my backups just because
I did some experimenting with my hdd.

== Thinklight ==

The thinklight works out of the box with the
Fn+PgUp key, but it can be controlled as well via the proc interface.

So you can write a nice script, which you can bind to events,
such as incoming emails, to let the light flash.

A possible solution is this small script:

<bash>
#!/bin/sh

if [ -z "$1" ]
then
echo "IBM ThinkLight Control script."
echo "2007 by Christian \"Fuchs\" Loosli."
echo ""
echo "usage: lightctl on | off | toggle | blink"
echo "blink takes two arguments: times and time"
echo "defaults (5 times, 0.5 seconds) are used if not specified"

else
if [ $1 = "on" ]
then
sudo sh -c "echo on > /proc/acpi/ibm/light"
fi
if [ $1 = "off" ]
then
sudo sh -c "echo off > /proc/acpi/ibm/light"
fi

if [ $1 = "toggle" ]
then
status=`cat /proc/acpi/ibm/light | grep status | awk '{print $2}'`

if [ $status = "on" ]
then
sudo sh -c "echo off > /proc/acpi/ibm/light"
else
sudo sh -c "echo on > /proc/acpi/ibm/light"
fi
fi

if [ $1 = "blink" ]
then

times=$2
time=$3

if [ -z "$2" ]
then
times=4
fi

if [ -z "$3" ]
then
time=0.5
fi

for i in `seq 1 $times`;
do
$0 toggle;
sleep $time;
$0 toggle;
sleep $time
done
fi
fi
exit 0

</bash>
which can be called to let the light blink or switch it off or on.
The blink part is nice for setting to events such as incoming
messages or emails.

(note: the thinklight is a LED, so it should not care on
how fast and often you let it blink. But I am not responsible
if this script damages your thinklight. Use at own risk.

== Power saving ==

First of all, turn off all things you are not using,
most of all bluetooth and W-LAN.
You can use the killswitch on the front, it works out of the box.

You can use the application [http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/ powertop]
by Intel to look for processes which prevent the CPU from longer sleep states.

It also gives you some recommendations on services to turn off.

Do _not_ turn off the optical drive polling by HAL.

Dimming the display also saves lots of power.

You can achieve about 2 - 3 hours of working time
(no compiling or other heavy CPU / GPU usage applications)
with the standard battery.

== Configuration Files ==

=== xorg.conf ===
Note that I use the XFont Server, you might have
to change the font path.

Note as well that the modes given don't affect
the modes available, as in this configuration the nvidia driver
reads out the available resolutions which fit the monitor.
You will only have 3 resolutions, but it saves lots of time
spent on configuring frequencies otherwhise.

Read the nvidia documentation on how to disable this behaviour if
you want the same resolutions as in windows or other OSes.

<pre>

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
inputDevice "Touchpad" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "Files"
FontPath "unix/:-1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc102"
Option "XkbLayout" "ch"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "LeftEdge" "1700"
Option "RightEdge" "5300"
Option "TopEdge" "1700"
Option "BottomEdge" "4200"
Option "FingerLow" "25"
Option "FingerHigh" "30"
Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
Option "MaxTapMove" "220"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "100"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.02"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.28"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.0010"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
Option "UseSHM" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "buttons" "7"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Flat Panel 1400x950"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce FX (generic)"
Option "Coolbits" "1"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "UseEvents" "false"
Option "TripleBuffer" "1"
Option "DamageEvents" "1"
Option "BackingStore" "1"
Option "InitialPixmapPlacement" "2"
Option "RandRRotation" "true
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
Option "UseCompositeWrapper" "true"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1440x900" "1024x768" "800x600"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "1440x900" "1024x768" "800x600"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
Modes "1440x900" "1024x768" "800x600"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection

</pre>

=== xmodmap ===

Note: you have to xmodmap /path/to/file
this file in your autostart. You might have different keycodes, use the application xev to display them.
It is highly recommended to use the XF86foobar buttons, as some applications will be preconfigured to them.
If you want to map them by yourself use Fxx, while xx > 12.

<pre>

! additional Arrow keys

keycode 233 = XF86Forward
keycode 234 = XF86Back

! Fn+arrow keys

keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev
keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay
keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext
keycode 164 = XF86AudioStop

! Fn+Fx keys F2, F3, F4, F5, F7, F8, F9, F12 in this order

keycode 146 = XF86ScreenSaver
keycode 241 = XF86Display
keycode 223 = XF86Sleep
keycode 243 = XF86Send
keycode 214 = XF86Video
keycode 196 = XF86iTouch
keycode 197 = XF86Eject
keycode 165 = XF86Standby

! Space bar

keycode 148 = XF86ZoomIn

! volume control (mute is hardwired)

keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume

</pre>

=== default.sh (acpid) ===

This is my slightly modified default.sh file to handle ibm hotbutton events.
Of course you can add the other buttons as well, however, as they produce key events there are easier ways for configuring the actions. However, an acpi solution is window manager / X independent.

You can read out the key events, as they might differ on your model,
with the acpi_listen application.

<bash>
#!/bin/sh
# /etc/acpi/default.sh

set $*

group=${1%%/*}
action=${1#*/}
device=$2
id=$3
value=$4

if [ "$group" = "ibm" ]; then
key="$2"\ "$3"\ "$4"
fi

log_unhandled() {
logger "ACPI event unhandled: $*"
}

case "$group" in
button)
case "$action" in
power)
/sbin/init 0
;;

*) log_unhandled $*
;;
esac
;;

ibm)
case "$action" in
hotkey)
case "$key" in
"HKEY 00000080 00001008")
/usr/bin/acpi_fakekey 220
;;
"HKEY 00000080 00001009")
/usr/bin/acpi_fakekey 221
;;
"HKEY 00000080 00001014")
/usr/bin/acpi_fakekey 222
;;
*)
logger "acpid: $group/$action $key is not defined"
;;

esac
;;
*)
;;
esac
;;

*) log_unhandled $*
;;
esac
</bash>

Note that I use acpi_fakekey to translate acpi to key events.

=== ACPI Fakekey ===

With this nice app you can translate acpi events into key codes.

I borrowed it from gentoos acpi-support, which borrowed it from Ubuntu people.

You can it out of the sunrise overlay, I recommend only getting the
acpi-fakekey.c file and compile it.

For the lazy guys:

There is an explanation and the source code,
which I wont copy and paste here, on this page:

[http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Asus_F3SV#ACPI_.26_Hotkeys Gentoo Wiki on Hotkeys]

I use this in the file above to generate keycodes for Fn+F8, Fn+F9 and Fn+Space.

Problem with hard drive clicking

2008-01-24T09:43:39Z

Clange: /* Tracking down the cause of the clicks */ monitoring shell script

Many users have reported a '''problem with hard drive clicking''', sometimes described as a repeating '''tick tick tick''' type of ticking sound.
The [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K80]] series which shipped with many T series Thinkpads in particular is reported to suffer from this problem. The clicks occur rapidly, and are quiet but noticeable. While in use in a quiet environment the clicks can be relatively loud and very irritating to some users. The clicks seem to happen when the drive is idle and the power has been on for a significant period of time. The clicking is also reported on other vendor's laptop hard drives too and is therefore almost certainly a hard drive related rather than a laptop chassis related.

The clicking sound appears to only occur when the drive is idle. Forcing the drive to be busy silences the ticking while the drive is busy. Launching programs that access the hard drive such as searching or defragmenting the drive helps for a time. Cycling the power on the hard drive such as through a full power off reboot of the system stops the ticking for the moment and has been used as a temporary solution. Also see use of hdparm for another way to reset the drive without a power off reboot.

Others recommend using Hitachi's drive feature tool to increase the acoustic management level, and/or set power management settings.

===Possible Cause and Speculation===

Laptop drives (especially Hitachi [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K80]], [[Hitachi Travelstar 5K100]] and SAMSUNG MP0804H) can unload heads very often, and they can produce a noticeable click when doing that. Some ThinkPad BIOSes can be very eager to program the HD Advanced Power Management feature (hdparm -B) even when told to always keep the HD in "Maximum Performance mode" and will do so every time AC state changes, and when coming out of suspend (be it S3 or S4). Unless you reset the HD's APM mode, it will unload its heads eventually thus producing the clicks.

Another proposed possible cause is the drive firmware running a low level surface media check periodically during drive idle time.

It is not known whether the problem is a sign of impending drive failure. The root cause of the problem is not yet known. It is quite likely to be a normal mode of drive operation. The problem is very prevalent.

Do not confuse this with regular activity. Many daemons poll (config) files every few seconds. Despite files being cached, POSIX-compliant filesystems like ext2 or ext3 must update (=write) the last access time. More details and workaround in [[How to reduce power consumption#Hard_Drives]].

===Tracking down the cause of the clicks===

Using "'''smartctl -A'''", it is possible to check if any of the drive's attributes related to platter spin-up/down or head unload are increasing when a click is heard.
That can help pinpointing the cause of the clicks.

A shell script like this may help:
<pre>#!/bin/bash
lastval=0
while :
do
newval=`smartctl -A /dev/sda | awk '$2=="Load_Cycle_Count" {print $10}'`
if [[ $newval != $lastval ]] # i.e. anything has changed (here: load cycle count only)
then
date
echo $newval
fi
lastval=$newval
sleep 30 # or some other interval
done
</pre>

===Possible solution (Linux)===

Temporary relief has been seen by using '''hdparm''' to reset the drive. But note the warning in the hdparm man page indicating that it is a dangerous operation. This is very likely due to the possibility of losing data in the write cache not yet stored to the hard drive. This would be dependent upon the particular hard drive. When used in the following to stop the clicking I have not seen any data loss. YMMV.

# hdparm /dev/hda
# sync
# sleep 5
# sync
# hdparm -w /dev/hda

The clicking noise apparently occurs when the drive is parking its heads (and ramping them off the drive surface in the process) after a timeout after the last disk access. Try turning off power management for the drive; that should stop the drive from parking the heads except when turning off:

# hdparm -B 255 /dev/hda

You can also try

# hdparm -B 254 /dev/hda

which doesn't turn power management off, but is the least agressive setting: it will still unload heads, but far less often. The drives '''are''' prepared to withstand a great number of head unloads (200k unloads are typical, Hitachi drives tolerate about 600k unloads).

These commands have immediate effect, and need to be re-issued at every boot, after resuming from disk or RAM, and after hotswapping. '''You have to reissue the -B commands every time the ThinkPad BIOS might have tried to override them'''.

===Specific models===

====Hitachi C4K60 (HTC426060G9AT00)====

On a Thinkpad X41 with a has a 60GB Hitachi C4K60 (HTC426060G9AT00) hard-disk that had the clicking problem (even in Windows), the hdparm solution above did not work. The problem was indeed caused by the hard-disk unloading the heads when idle, and the Load_Cycle_Count SMART statistic could be seen increasing when the clicks occurred.

hdparm -B settings did not seem to help, and a check of the harddrives specs (available in [http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Travelstar_C4K60 hitachigst.com]) verified that setting the APM mode off (hdparm -B 255) would set it actually to the lowest APM mode (the same as hdparm -B 254). In this drive, even the lowest APM mode unloads the heads very aggressively causing the clicking sounds. Another problem is that the drive is rated only for 600000 unload/load cycles, which means that the drive will break in at most a couple of years.

{{NOTE|This observation is only about the specific model (Hitachi C4K60), and is not true for more recent Hitachi drives, which do disable APM with -B 255.}}

====Samsung MP0804H 80GB====

On this drive, the ''clicking noise'' can be immediately stopped just by enabling ''automatic offline tests'' using
# smartctl -o on /dev/hda
Even more strange is that SMART wasn't enabled by default, although the drive supports it.

The drive had already performed 15.539 load cycles (out of 600.000) within only one week.

Note that enabling SMART (-s on) without enabling ''offline tests'' -- which is what I did immediately after observing the ''clicks'' -- did not solve the problem, but made it quite clear that the drive was ''badly in need of some care''.

==== Seagate Momentus 7200.1 ====
(I got this drive in my x61 tablet)

On this drive, each click does indeed correspond to an increase in SMART attribute 193, "193 Load_Cycle_Count", as you can see by doing a
# smartctl -A /dev/sda

before and after a click.

It seems like the problem is that the default powersaving mode for the drive is one which causes clicking. In fact, executing
# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
,which is supposed to turn off power management, actually leaves power management on, and is equivalent to
# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda

as you can see by comparing the results of
# hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced
# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

This may or may or may not be related to something else strange; the drive reports that the Advanced power management level is 0x8000 more than what you set it to, presumably leading hdparm to report that it is always set to "unknown setting" (since the number should be between 1 and 255). FYI the results of the above sequence of commands is:

# hdparm -B 1 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0x01 (1)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8001)
* Advanced Power Management feature set

# hdparm -B 128 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0x80 (128)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8080)
* Advanced Power Management feature set

# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x80fe)
* Advanced Power Management feature set

# hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda; hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to disabled
Advanced power management level: unknown setting (0x8080)
Advanced Power Management feature set

The workaround seems to be to execute
# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

So it seems like the drive is interpreting "hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda", which I'm guessing is the default (and which is supposed to be NOT powersaving mode) as a request to go into powersaving mode, which causes it to spin down alot and to and click. And I'm guessing that "hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda" actually takes it out of powersaving mode.

Kindof annoying because
# smartctl -A /dev/sda
shows that I have already accumulated a Load_Cycle_Count 106680 after owning the laptop for just a few weeks! I'm not sure that I understand this stuff, but if this corresponds to "Load/Unload Cycles" in http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_momentus7200.pdf, then that's more than 1/6 of the drive's lifetime!

==== [http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=HardDrivesOpticalDrives/2.5-inchHardDiskDrives/MK2035GSS/MK2035GSSSpecifications Toshiba MK2035GSS] ====

Issue happens with "laptop mode" disabled. BIOS is an "AMIBIOS 8.00.14", and the chipset is "Mobile Intel GM965 Express".

I can solve the problem with the hdparm workaround, the lowest value that makes the trick for me is:
# sudo hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda

===Firmware upgrades===

There are two HD firmware upgrades on Lenovo's support website. One is specific to X41's, and will upgrade Hitachi's to Release A0L0 (document [http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-67238 MIGR-67238], 2007/01/24). The upgrade comes in three forms: diskette, windows executable or ISO CD-ROM image.
IBM's latest posted firmware, A5DA, does not appear to solve the problem.

A newer upgrade set ([http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-62282 MIGR-62282], 2007/05/02) updates HD firmwares of several brands, including Hitachi. The patch upgrades firmware for HTC4260xxG9AT00 to A0L2 (according to program output, from 00P3A0B5 to 00P3A0L2). The upgrade comes in a large (20 MB) ISO format, or as several diskettes. There is seemingly no windows executable; therefore upgrading a diskless machine can be problematic (it involves making a DOS-based USB bootable drive).

The upgrade caused one X41 Tablet HTC426060G9AT00 drive to stop clicking.

===Another Possible Solution===

IBM, when notified about this occurance, may replace the drive with a Fujitsu 5k 80GB hard drive, as to them the sound is indicative of a potential hard drive failure.

==External links==
*Ubuntu reported bugs: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695 59695] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/104535 104535]
*[http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Downloads] - The drive feature tool may help with this problem.
*[http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=7462 Thread on thinkpads.com]
*[http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=46058 Thread on notebookforums.com]
*[http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?p=143203 Thread on silentpcreview.com]
*[http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15769 Another Thread on thinkpads.com]
*[http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=28538&whichpage=1 Thread on tabletpcbuzz.com]
*[http://thinkpad-forum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2255 German Thread on thinkpad-forum.de (Containing an interesting remark about a possible problem with the Cache)]

[[Category:T40]] [[Category:T41]] [[Category:T42]] [[Category:T43]] [[Category:X41]] [[Category:G41]]