Sunday 7 October 2012

Known Linux issues re: Lifetime of low-power USB hard drives

[I originally posted this on the Raspberry PI forum].

This could affect anyone with an ARM computer running *nix and a low-power USB hard drive.  Here's what my drive looked like when I realized I needed to check it. It's been spun up for about half a year:

$ MY_DRIVE_OPTS="-d sat /dev/sda"
$ sudo smartctl -a $MY_DRIVE_OPTS | grep Load_Cycle_Count
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   109   109   000    Old_age   Always       -       273664


For those not familiar with smartctl, some explanation may be needed.