Cool screenlet to monitor Hard disk Load Cycle count on Ubuntu.
If you are using Ubuntu, then chances are that you already know of the notorious issue which causes hard disk to wear down three times as fast on laptops.
More details about this bug can be accessed here. The Ubuntu team has claimed to fix this bug and currently it is enabled in the Ubuntu Intrepid ‘proposed’ repositories. However, you would have to wait a while to get the official fix in the ‘Intrepid’ repositories. There is also an ‘ugly’ fix for this issue which is an unofficial fix which can be found here.
The root cause of this issue is the very high rate of increase of the Load_Cycle_Count of laptop hard disks causing more wear and tear of your disk. The ‘ugly’ fix manages to bring this rate down to a reasonable level. However, you may want to keep tabs on your Load_Cycle_Count for many reasons. That’s where my screenlet comes into the picture.
I already made a post on Ubuntuforums on this. I have given detailed step-by-step instructions on creating the screenlet which shows the current Load_Cycle_Count, the current HDD temperature and the average Load_Cycle_Count per hour. Just click here and go to my Ubuntuforums post.
Oh, in case you are wondering, this is how my desktop looks after activating the screenlet(Click on it for actual size):
And yes, whatever do you with your computer, you are at your own. This is an informative post. While my every intention is to help you, I can in no way be blamed if your computer goes boom !
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