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My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition

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  My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition Tibor Mate <tibiamp7@gmail.com> - 2017-09-19 12:20 +0200
    Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2017-09-19 13:50 +0200
      Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition Cindy-Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com> - 2017-09-19 16:00 +0200
        Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2017-09-19 17:40 +0200
        Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition "Martin McCormick" <martin.m@suddenlink.net> - 2017-09-19 18:30 +0200
    Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD  partition "Alexander V. Makartsev" <avbetev@gmail.com> - 2017-09-19 14:10 +0200
    Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD  partition Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz> - 2017-09-20 00:00 +0200
      Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD  partition <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2017-09-20 08:10 +0200
        Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition Tibor Mate <tibiamp7@gmail.com> - 2017-11-09 11:10 +0100

#186996 — My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition

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Hello dear support,

i love debian but since Stretch i have this problem: using laptop there is
a thin - mosquito-like - noise from HDD which immediately stop when i mount
a partition. Then the noise stop BUT after cca 2-3 minutes starts again and
stop just when i unmount the partition. But then again start after 2-3
minutes so it is terrible circle and to use and work on this system can
not. On windows no problem, on older debian distros no problem. Have you
any idea with it (some deb package that can do it). Thanks. Tibor

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#186998

Hi,

(If you aren't subscribed to the debian-user list, then better do.
 Normally replies are sent without Cc: to individual mail addresses.)

Tibor Mate wrote:
> Hello dear support,

Disclaimer: I am just a user.

The noise timing which you describe and the behavior with old systems
gives the suspicion that it has something to do with the "power mode" 
of the disk. I.e. when it gets into power saving mode, it begins to sing.

Some info can be seen at
  https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Powermode

I would try to verify the suspicion by having a little loop which reads
some random block from hard disk every 15 seconds.
But probably you can already verify by

  not_yet_read_file=...some.freshly.chosen.path...

  dd if=$not_yet_read_file of=/dev/null

whether the singing ends when the disk becomes busy.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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#187009

On 9/19/17, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> (If you aren't subscribed to the debian-user list, then better do.
>  Normally replies are sent without Cc: to individual mail addresses.)
>
> Tibor Mate wrote:
>>
>> Disclaimer: I am just a user.


Self-incriminating admission: Me, too. :)


> The noise timing which you describe and the behavior with old systems
> gives the suspicion that it has something to do with the "power mode"
> of the disk. I.e. when it gets into power saving mode, it begins to sing.
>
> Some info can be seen at
>   https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Powermode
>
> I would try to verify the suspicion by having a little loop which reads
> some random block from hard disk every 15 seconds.
> But probably you can already verify by
>
>   not_yet_read_file=...some.freshly.chosen.path...
>
>   dd if=$not_yet_read_file of=/dev/null
>
> whether the singing ends when the disk becomes busy.


My apologies that a reboot to test my memory and get specifics will...
create too much upheaval just this second, BUT... in the last couple
days, I saw something that I can't quite completely remember.

Whatever I'm remembering is in BIOS. It was about a setting
specifically related to the hard drives. It referenced older hard
drives (am highlighting that to help nail down the right feature).

One of that feature's settings was about letting the manufacturer's
design within the hard drive itself have its own head to control
things. I may be remembering wrong, but my take at that second was
that it might have been about the drive spinning up and down AND that
it was something standalone within that component. It was one of those
"Wow, I had NO idea all THAT was going on inside those bricks". :D

Seems reasonable to mention it here. My memory recall is that it might
have been something about efficiency which is the feel I'm getting
about this thread. I'd never heard of that BIOS setting nor seen it
before. Whatever it was is an intended #toDo to dig up more details.

Cindy :)

PS I was just verifying Tibor's name (for the email address field)
before sending and now see Alexander's reply. Maybe "Advanced Power
Management " is what I saw if that's something's  that completely
within the hard drive and is something the hard drive can do by itself
with no outside intervention.. AND is something that can be affected
by a BIOS setting, to boot. :)

Or not. :D
-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* ARRRGGHHH! Still need to feed the fishes! #toDo. Literally :D *

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#187017

Hi,

Cindy-Sue Causey wrote:
> One of that feature's settings was about letting the manufacturer's
> design within the hard drive itself have its own head to control
> things.
> [...]
> Maybe "Advanced Power Management " is what I saw

Firmware might well offer similar opportunities to tweak your drives
as do smartmontools (and probably others).

(Of course, an energy saving mode on a healthy disk should emit less noise
 rather than more. So if it is about one of those modes, this would as next
 cause doubts about the hardware's life expectation.)


> "Wow, I had NO idea all THAT was going on inside those bricks". :D

There is more of a computer in a modern disk than in my first professional
workstation.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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#187020

Cindy-Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com> writes:
> Self-incriminating admission: Me, too. :)

> My apologies that a reboot to test my memory and get specifics will...
> create too much upheaval just this second, BUT... in the last couple
> days, I saw something that I can't quite completely remember.
> 
> Whatever I'm remembering is in BIOS. It was about a setting
> specifically related to the hard drives. It referenced older hard
> drives (am highlighting that to help nail down the right feature).
> 
> One of that feature's settings was about letting the manufacturer's
> design within the hard drive itself have its own head to control
> things. I may be remembering wrong, but my take at that second was
> that it might have been about the drive spinning up and down AND that
> it was something standalone within that component. It was one of those
> "Wow, I had NO idea all THAT was going on inside those bricks". :D
> 
> Seems reasonable to mention it here. My memory recall is that it might
> have been something about efficiency which is the feel I'm getting
> about this thread. I'd never heard of that BIOS setting nor seen it
> before. Whatever it was is an intended #toDo to dig up more details.
> 
> Cindy :)
> 
> PS I was just verifying Tibor's name (for the email address field)
> before sending and now see Alexander's reply. Maybe "Advanced Power
> Management " is what I saw if that's something's  that completely
> within the hard drive and is something the hard drive can do by itself
> with no outside intervention.. AND is something that can be affected
> by a BIOS setting, to boot. :)
> 
> Or not. :D
> --
> Cindy-Sue Causey

	I think there are a couple of things, here.  Depending
upon your BIOS, there are energy-saving settings that let the
hard drive motor spin down when there has been no disk activity
for some period of time. The down side of this is that it is
impossible to predict when there will be a need for the hard
drive so there is a guaranteed short hang as soon as a process on
your system needs file services whether it be a read or a write.

	Let's say that you are logged in and have bash as your
login shell.  Things are quiet and you press Return to generate a
shell prompt. You may hear the drive spin up and notice a bit of
sluggishness before you see the prompt.  Hit Enter again and the
next prompt will appear much faster because the drive is already
spinning and it can check for new mail much faster because of
that.  When you have a solid-state flash drive as your boot
drive, the drive is theoretically always spinning so you can
sometimes notice that those shell prompts come a lot faster even
if it was several minutes since your last activity because there
are no brief pauses while the drive is coming up.

	If the short hangs due to the drive restarting are not a
problem, then use the energy-saving setting if you have it.

	Now, for the mosquito noise.  I have actually had several
hard drives do this and it is not a good thing but some do it for
years before things really go to pot.  The platter spindle inside
has needle bearings that allow the disk stack to spin along at several
thousand RPM for ten or twenty years without trouble but
eventually, Father Time meets physics and a bearing gets a flat
spot or deformation on it. Every time the platter spins once, the
bearing, itself, spins many more times and if there is a bad
spot, it lightly catches every time it hits which gives a steady
whine to the drive.

	While it may be good for another 5 or 10 years, it is a
warning that one day, it may ceize up and that's that right then
and there. Let's hope your backup was good and recent.

	When these mechanical issues occur, stopping and
restarting the drive may make the whine go away but it comes
right back as soon as the spindle reaches normal speed and all
the forces that conspired to wear the needle bearings out allow
them to resume their previous not quite perfect rotation once
again.

	In other words, that sound tells you that it may work 5
more minutes or 5 more years but the clock is ticking or whining
in this case.

	I have opened up some of those old drives after tossing
them and you can actually feel the bearings stick slightly
several times for each rotation of the disk. It's amazing they
last as long as they do.

Martin McCormick

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#187002 — Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition

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It is possible that Advanced Power Management feature of your hard drive
is to blame.
Try to disable it with "hdparm" and those noises should not happen again.
    $ sudo hdparm -B 255 /dev/path/to/your/hdd

On 19.09.2017 14:53, Tibor Mate wrote:
> Hello dear support,
>
> i love debian but since Stretch i have this problem: using laptop
> there is a thin - mosquito-like - noise from HDD which immediately
> stop when i mount a partition. Then the noise stop BUT after cca 2-3
> minutes starts again and stop just when i unmount the partition. But
> then again start after 2-3 minutes so it is terrible circle and to use
> and work on this system can not. On windows no problem, on older
> debian distros no problem. Have you any idea with it (some deb package
> that can do it). Thanks. Tibor

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#187038 — Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition

On 19/09/17 21:53, Tibor Mate wrote:
> Hello dear support,
> i love debian but since Stretch i have this problem: using laptop there is
> a thin - mosquito-like - noise from HDD which immediately stop when i mount
> a partition. Then the noise stop BUT after cca 2-3 minutes starts again and
> stop just when i unmount the partition. But then again start after 2-3
> minutes so it is terrible circle and to use and work on this system can
> not. On windows no problem, on older debian distros no problem. Have you
> any idea with it (some deb package that can do it). Thanks. Tibor

How do you know that the noise comes from the HDD? The mosquito-like 
noise you describe sounds like coil whine. I conjecture that the more 
recent Debian has different power characteristics (perhaps more 
efficient?) that move your laptop into a load level that causes coil 
whine to occur. The other solutions proposed on this thread might work, 
perhaps because they change the current drawn by your laptop. This might 
be why mounting the partition appears to help.

- What is the model of your laptop and does it have a known problem with 
coil whine?

- Does the whine occur when AC is connected or only on battery?

- Can you remove the whine by changing the screen brightness?

- Does the whine occur under load? For example "povray --benchmark".

I have heard coil whine on many computers. Some whine at high load. Some 
whine only under ATX off (just enough power on the motherboard to allow 
he power button to work).

Kind regards,

-- 
Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz>
Director
Transient Software Limited <http://transient.nz/>
New Zealand

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#187049 — Re: My Problem with Stretch - thin mosquito-like noise from HDD partition

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On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 09:54:19AM +1200, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> On 19/09/17 21:53, Tibor Mate wrote:
> >Hello dear support,
> >i love debian but since Stretch i have this problem: using laptop there is
> >a thin - mosquito-like - noise from HDD [...]

> How do you know that the noise comes from the HDD? The mosquito-like
> noise you describe sounds like coil whine [...]

Good point. The noise might come from the HDD, but it might well be
something else, and voltage converter coils are good candidates.

Cheers
- -- tomás
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#188807

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Hello everebody, few months ago I have reported my problem with stretch,
when a thin - mosquito-like noise coming from somewhere from the laptop and
I have found that is a probably a matter of HDD because it stop for few
seconds when I mounted/unmounted the partition of my seconds disk (system
on SSD in the CD/DVD tray). Today I have finaly resolve this noise when I
played a little with the configuration of the gnome-disk-utility. There is
an option to use APM and to put the drive to sleep and so others. This will
help and no noise come from the laptop no more. Thank you all for the
helpfull hands. Greetings, Tibi

2017-09-20 8:01 GMT+02:00 <tomas@tuxteam.de>:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 09:54:19AM +1200, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> > On 19/09/17 21:53, Tibor Mate wrote:
> > >Hello dear support,
> > >i love debian but since Stretch i have this problem: using laptop there
> is
> > >a thin - mosquito-like - noise from HDD [...]
>
> > How do you know that the noise comes from the HDD? The mosquito-like
> > noise you describe sounds like coil whine [...]
>
> Good point. The noise might come from the HDD, but it might well be
> something else, and voltage converter coils are good candidates.
>
> Cheers
> - -- tomás
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAlnCBCYACgkQBcgs9XrR2kZpZgCfUIKWROOZucKoRqTn4BpWiqXb
> +VAAn1BaGdUVtTuqucnNKJ+Am2SHo557
> =t2H+
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>

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