“A recent bug report for Ubuntu Linux has confirmed that both
the Feisty and Gutsy versions of Ubuntu cause some unnecessary wear
and tear on a hard drive. The bug report reads:“‘I run feisty (beta) on a Dell Inspiron 9400 with a Hitachi
HTS541616J9SA00 hard drive. After booting, the drive’s power
management settings are such that it spins down A LOT. To give you
some statistics: the drive is rated for 600,000 load/unload cycles,
and after 2.5 months of running Feisty I’m already at more than
56,000 load/unload cycles (and only 150 power cycles), according to
the SMART data. At this rate the drive will be dead after 2.5
years, and I don’t even use this computer for more than a couple of
hours each day…'”