Hard drive overheats when laptop running on AC power

Here is the deal. When using 12.04 laptop runs so cool and quiet but immediately I plug in, the temperature of the Hard drive starts to go up. (hitting 60•C in no time). However when I unplug the AC cable, the temperature drops to normal levels (45-50•C). What could be done to correct this? Thanks in advance

HP PAVILION DV6700 Intel Core Duo 2.0Ghz 4gb RAM 250 GB HDD

Here are pastebins of hdparm and smartctl on my ubuntu partition sda3:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda3 (on battery)

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda3 (on AC)

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda3 (on battery)

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda3 (on AC )

sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda3 (on battery)

sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda3 (on AC)

Solution 1:

Here's the solution:

laptop-mode-tools is controlling power management for your hard drive, and you need to configure it appropriately for your situation.

Open /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf for editing with root privileges, and around line 276 (on Ubuntu 12.04), change this value to 600

NOLM_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=7200

This is the amount of time before your drive is told to "spin down" or idle on AC power. 10 minutes with no read/write activity is reasonable.

And around lines 290-291 (on Ubuntu 12.04), change both these values to 1:

LM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=254

NOLM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=254

These set the power management level granted to the drive, with 1 being "full" power management, and 254 being "almost zero" power management. The latter setting is the reason for your temperatures, because you can set the level, but how the drive manages power at a level is entirely up to it -- it completely depends on the implementation in the drive's firmware, and can vary by model, manufacturer, etc.

With the changes, we are now telling the drive to perform the same power management it does while on battery (which is satisfactory for you). This is different from simply allowing the drive to spindown while on AC (as in @EliahKagan's answer), because that would still leave the drive's power management set to near zero at level 254.

How to determine power management level

To find out the current level, while on battery, AC, or any other situation:

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep Advanced (replace sda appropriately)

Solution 2:

Have you tried installing Jupiter? (http://www.webupd8.org/2011/09/jupiter-applet-finally-available-for.html)

set it continuously to 'power on demand' or 'power saving', maybe that spins down the HD

I have it on Precise Pangoling 12.04, works great (although i don't really have your overheating problem...)

Hope it helps

Solution 3:

I would like to request you to test this on some other version of Ubuntu (like ubuntu 10.4 or 11.04 or 11.10 - you can use live version of those distro). If the problem still persists,

A. first check your earthing connection because improper earthing always leads to the overheating problem

B. check your A/C adapter because it may be damaged and causing hdd over heat while plugging into the ac source.

c. Check your laptop battery a failing battery caused the problem with the adapter because it could be attempting to "overcharge" the battery, which doesn’t increase the battery’s charge, but, rather radiates the charge as heat energy (this is what is causing your overheating).

i will ask you to remove your laptop battery and then plug it into ac source in-order to check the battery.

Solution 4:

Charging your laptop battery generates heat. So when you plug in your AC power, and your laptop battery isn't fully charged (it's previously been running off battery), it will start charging the battery, thus generating heat.

This is why you usually get the fan spinning up when switching to AC power after being on battery, and inevitably the system components will heat up due to the heat from the battery.

The hard drive, being reasonably close to the battery, will probably heat up a bit too. This therefore is a plausible explanation of what you are observing.

There are other things that would cause your laptop to get warmer when it's on AC power, such as various components coming out of a "low power" mode, but the battery charging, IMHO, is a much more significant factor.

You say that your hard drive is "overheating" but only mention that it reaches 60 degrees. In reality, manufacturers usually list 60 degrees as the top of the "safe operating temperature" for 2.5 inch drives. Your laptop manufacturer will have designed your laptop's cooling system so that the most extreme situation (charging battery while stressing CPU, etc) should still cause all components to remain within their safe operating temperature. However, they make a number of assumptions. They assume that your room temperature is a certain value, that you're using the laptop on a solid, flat surface, its ventilation holes aren't blocked, etc. If it's 28 degrees inside and you have the laptop on your lap, then components will exceed their safe operating temperature. Similarly, if the fan fails or is blocked, then it will also.

It's also not unusual for laptops simply to run too hot because they have poor thermal design from the start.

The hard drive manufacturer will have given some "breathing room" in specifying 60 degrees as the top safe operating temperature, which will partially make up for non-ideal cooling situations. That is, if you go up to 65 it shouldn't be "too bad". You probably don't need to worry about imminent death of your laptop. But any heat will reduce the life of your components and the cooler the better. You should look into whether the fan is operating correctly, whether you're using the laptop in a hotter environment than a typical room temperature, and whether you have the laptop on a soft or warm surface or one which will press against the air vents. If using the laptop on your lap, get a solid tray/stand for it to sit on. Some companies sell these with built-in cooling fans which I think is overkill.