Hard drive always working....

[Quake3DeathGod]

I know this sounds petty, but I've noticed that my hard drive is ALWAYS working its butt off. Churning away, the working light seems to stay on far more than off. My system spec are Core 2 Quad, 6 gigs of ram, mint 6 -64bit gnome installed on a 180 gig drive formated to ext3. I have a 500 gig usb back up drive used to store movies, family pictures, and program backups. Is this a normal operation?
I can even get up in the middle of the night, and no one has been on it in a long time, and it just churning away, little blue light just blinking hard as it can go. Whats going on with it?

[Fred]

Quake3DeathGod,

You might want to work your way through the thread referenced below. It is long and there is a lot of content there, but it will give you a better idea of the problems associated with this issue and some possible solutions.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=13480

Fred

[Quake3DeathGod]

Thanks Fred, a LOT of information there. I am working on sifting through it. I've read so far up to page 4 on the link. So far, all of this is based on laptop drives. Mine is not a laptop. I've not read enough to see if you guys started talking about desk tops, but I did come across where you had said you wouldnt recommend changing to write back mode on a desktop. There is a lot of links in links too, so I've got to read a lot. I had 4 tabs open from that one link you sent! : ) I'm not scared of reading all this, and it sorta makes since, yet when I get done, will I have the answer for a desktop? Kinda like studying for a big test, and finding out you were reading the right book, but the wrong chapters!

KL

[Fred]

Quake3DeathGod,

No, you probably won't have the answer to your problem, especially as related to desktops. It will just give you some background on the issues.

As is in there somewhere, just don't put too much weight on the flashing light. Nobody really knows what it is measuring.

I would suggest you use noatime in your fstab mounting lines however. That would be safe and help your problem. How much I couldn't say.

Sorry, but I don't have the time right now to get too deep into this. Maybe later if you wish.

Fred

[Quake3DeathGod]

Thank you. I will looking into the use of the noatime and check into it. I can actually hold the drive in my hand, and I can feel it working. Its quite hot as well. I'm not sure its as hot as I've seen a vista drive though. I can attest to the vista drive not blinking this blue light all the time though, its very bright and noticeable.
This may be a totally unrelated problem, or they can go together. I cant see any network shares, yet they can see mine with no trouble. I believe both started at about the same time, the no access and the hard drive working over time. I've been digging for a few days now on the no network access, tried every thing I can think of and find. I somehow think the two problems are related.

KL

[Fred]

Quake3DeathGod,

You would be correct in suspecting the two problems are related. The system is scanning for shares every so many seconds.

There are others in the forum that are much better qualified at helping you with networking with Windows systems than I am though.

Fred

[Quake3DeathGod]

I have 2 systems on mint 6 / 64, two more on mint 6 / 32, and a windows xp system. The two 64bit systems can not see any shares, but all others can access the two 64bit systems, as well as all the shares of all the other computers. Can even see them selves in the network workgroup. The two 64bit systems have unable to mount remote location error. I will have to hook up the hard drive light in the other 64 bit system to see if it is is working over time as mine is. I suspect it is. The network no access has to have come from an update or something. I've not changed anything, and the other 64bit systems is my son's and he wont mess around with the settings.

Also, I've changed the relatime in fstab to noatime, its made no difference I can see. Hard drive light just stays on, acts like one of those older system running windows and not enough ram! Always swapping!

I thank you Fred for you very fast responses. Maybe some one with some networking ideas can help me out. I kinda wonder if someone else running 64bit mint is having the same trouble.

[Quake3DeathGod]

I dont know what to do..... I cant figure out why I cant see any shares, and I cant get this hard drive from working over time.... I'm open to any suggestions now!

[Quake3DeathGod]

Has anyone thought of anything to keep the hard drive from working OT? My drive is now getting pretty hot. I'm just a few days from finishing a torrent download, and I'll have to abandon mint 6. I was hoping that mint 7 64bit would be done in time to switch! I guess not.... I'd even take on a beta 64 bit mint 7 to stop this drive from killing its self.

[Carl]

Has anyone thought of anything to keep the hard drive from working OT? My drive is now getting pretty hot. I'm just a few days from finishing a torrent download, and I'll have to abandon mint 6. I was hoping that mint 7 64bit would be done in time to switch! I guess not.... I'd even take on a beta 64 bit mint 7 to stop this drive from killing its self.

Help is at hand

it will probably be formally announced on the blog in a couple of days:

[url]ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/testing/LinuxMint-7-x64-RC1.iso[/url]

I'm currently running it and I haven't experienced anything major

[Quake3DeathGod]

I've played with mint 7 -32 bit, and did not notice the hard drive working problem, may not have ran it long enough, I dont know. I'll report back in a few days or so and see if it worked out.