A recent bug report for Ubuntu Linux has confirmed that both the Feisty and Gutsy versions of Ubuntu cause some unnecessary wear and tear on a hard drive. The bug report reads:
“I run feisty (beta) on a Dell Inspiron 9400 with a Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 hard drive. After booting, the drive’s power management settings are such that it spins down A LOT. To give you some statistics: the drive is rated for 600,000 load/unload cycles, and after 2.5 months of running Feisty I’m already at more than 56,000 load/unload cycles (and only 150 power cycles), according to the SMART data. At this rate the drive will be dead after 2.5 years, and I don’t even use this computer for more than a couple of hours each day.”
(via luKas’ shared items in Google Reader)