Comment 640 for bug 59695

I have a Thinkpad X40 with a Hitachi hard disk. It is a C4Kxx series disk, which is not supported by Hitachi's "Feature Tool," so I'm unable to change the default APM settings in the disk's firmware.

I've been following this bug and its related threads closely and implemented the most recent fixes. The fixes *do* work, in the sense that I can query the drive using 'hdparm -I' and it reports that power management has been disabled, or set to 254 or 1 or whatever value the scripts mandate.

And yet, the drive just sits there clicking away 1 to 3 times a minute, and the load cycle count keeps going up. I just now (in the last 5 minutes) listened to it click 3 times, got a terminal and ran 'hdparm -I' which says "Advanced power management level: disabled" and listened to it resume clicking, just like clockwork. It really has me stumped.