HDD heads parking

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007, Zac wrote:
 > Responding to 
 > <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-mobile/2007-October/010186.html>
 > 
 > This problem seems to affect Toshiba a105 laptops also. 'ataidle -P 254 
 > 0 0' seems to fix the problem after the system is loaded, but I've 
 > noticed that when the computer boots or reboots, the load cycles still 
 > seem to increase (did a test via smartctl). It is an improvement, but 
 > I'm trying to figure out how to disable this completely, even at boot time.

See /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ataidle.sh for sample rc.conf settings to run
ataidle on disk/s at boot.

I'm now using 'ataidle -P 0 0 0' which disables APM altogether on ad0,
after finding I'd used up 25% of my nominal lifetime allowance of ~2M
Load_Cycle_Counts in just under a year powered up over about 18 months,
so I was very glad to find out about this.  (Fujitsu MHV2040AH)

You'll need to run ataidle again in /etc/rc.resume if you're suspending
your laptop.  You could even run different settings on battery or AC ..

Cheers, Ian