What is 'Load Cycle Count'?

LeVeL

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Load Cycle Count 1 1441809 Watch
Warning: Load Cycle Count is below the average limits (32-100).


Can someone help me make sense of this? Oh, also, what's 'Power On Count'

Power On Hours Count 97 2242498 Watch
Warning: Power On Hours Count is below the average limits (99-100).

Thanks!
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Known_ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes


Tip for the future: Tell people you're talking about HDDs.


Load Cycle Count 1 1441809 Watch
Warning: Load Cycle Count is below the average limits (32-100).

FUJITSU said:
The product supports a minimum of 300,000 normal Load/Unload cycles.

1441809 is quite a bit larger than 300000, if that figure is correct then it may mean your HDD is close to cracking up.

Another indicator is the 1, 100 would be normal and 0 would be omfg.


The power on count counts how long the power has been on. Unit of count depends on the manufacturer, Seagate is counting in hours for example.
In your case it probably is not in hours, unless your steam-powered drive was built in 1750. Minutes would work out to 4.3 years of operation...
 
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PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?!
 
Oh god, you're bwned.

Back that shit up, post-haste.

Do you have a laptop, and is it running Ubuntu Hardy? (Or some other contemporary linux distro?) Or vista?
 
The reason I asked for OS is that one version for Ubuntu, and I believe Vista also at some point, did something weird with hard drive power management that led to the problem that you have.

With XP, I'm guessing the cause of the issue is not the same, but regardless, my recommendation remains the same. Backup, and see if you can get that replaced.
 
Laptops unload their read/write arms onto a little rack after a couple of seconds of idleness. So far, so good - improves shock resistance and coping with sudden power loss, for example.

Trouble is, some operating systems regularly write something onto the hdd causing a few load/unload cycles a minute (typical Linux example: /var/log/*). The 1.4 million cycles in the op are quite a lot though, at 2 per minute that would work out to 1.5 years of operation - did the laptop run that much in its 3(?) years of life?
 
Its pretty much always on. At night, while I'm at work or in class, etc. Off when I go on vacation (usually just skiing in the winter), off when transporting it. So yes, its on a LOT. I backed everything important up though. Thanks for the info, +reps all around :)
 
Got home just now, turned on the comp, and got an error message (b/w, not blue) about a hardware device not working. I thought that was it but I rebooted and its working fine now :dunno: Frantically backing up the last few bits of data.

Edit: it also said something about a missing boot device. Now I'm 99% sure its a failing hdd
 
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IF too many load/unload cycles cause problems, then those should be sporadic problems at first. Makes sense that it sometimes fails, sometimes works. Just like a worn out gearbox, sometimes you get the gear, sometimes you don't.

Maybe it sometimes fails to load the arm onto the platters on bootup? If that's the case then you should take care not to let it unload too often due to idleness.
 
Left it on overnight, came down and the hdd was at 46C. Its not dead yet but its clearly dying, so a) is it a good idea to not wait for it to crash and just get a new hdd and b) before I spend money and tear my laptop apart, could it be anything else that's causing the crashes?
 
b: Highly unlikely. The huge counter values you quoted earlier come directly from the HDD, nothing else is making those up. The boot failure may be whatever, the counters aren't.

a: Well, if there is no important data on the HDD and you don't need the laptop on a day to day basis, then you can wait for it to crash. Otherwise I'd fix it now.

When you have a new HDD, shut down/hibernate the laptop whenever you don't need it for a while. Laptop drives are not built for years of 24/7 use.
 
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