bizarre hard drive failure

Hi all,
I bought a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop computer (Turion 64 X2-based, ATI
chipset) and it arrived a couple days ago. In no time at all, I had
Ubuntu Feisty up on it alongside Windows Vista, and everything seemed
to work great. I used "smartctl -a" to verify that the hard drive
parameters were within the expected good range for a brand new drive,
and everything checked out. The drive is a Hitachi HTS541680J9SA00,
80gb, 5400rpm, SATA.

Today, I was playing around with hdparm to see if I could reduce the
power consumption of the disk drive. I noticed that this drive
supported the "power-on in standby" feature, and enabled it with
"hdparm -s1". This didn't seem to be a dangerous thing to do at all.
I kept using the computer for an hour or so, then put it in standby
mode, and tried to take it out a minute later.

To my surprise, when the computer booted back up, BIOS informed me
that the hard drive had failed. I couldn't believe it. I tried
booting off a USB stick with a small Linux system on it, and the boot
messages informed me again that Linux was unable to communicate with
the first SATA hard disk. I then removed the drive from the laptop
and put it into my desktop computer, where the BIOS again failed to
recognize it. I tried holding the drive in my hand as I powered-on
the desktop, and I could not feel the drive begin to spin up at all.

Is it possible that I've ruined this drive by enabling "power-on in
standby"???? Why would the drive have this option if it doesn't
work??? Is there any way to get it out of this mode? Or could this
be a freak coincidental drive failure? Any advice will be greatly
appreciated!

Dan Lenski
University of Maryland

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: bizarre hard drive failure
    ... I kept using the computer for an hour or so, then put it in standby ... booting off a USB stick with a small Linux system on it, ... and put it into my desktop computer, where the BIOS again failed to ... Is it possible that I've ruined this drive by enabling "power-on in ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)
  • Re: Mac Move feature not supported (6509 with dual sup 1 and IOS 12.1)
    ... System returned to ROM by power-on ... Virtual Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interface ... 381K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory. ... Standby has 227328K/34816K bytes of memory. ...
    (comp.dcom.sys.cisco)
  • Re: 6500 Switch, PoE & Linksys WAP4400N
    ... System returned to ROM by power-on ... 381K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory. ... Standby has 227328K/34816K bytes of memory. ...
    (comp.dcom.sys.cisco)
  • soft power-off, reset ...
    ... about controller features and functions: ... Issues a reset signal at power-on ... halt, then turn key from on to standby. ...
    (comp.sys.sgi.admin)
  • Re: Desktop power consumption in standby
    ... I measured the power consumption of my 4-year old desktop computer at ... 55W in standby which makes me shut it down or hibernate it when I'm ... I'm looking at buying the Dimension E520, ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)