I bugzilla-ed the following hidden problem a few weeks ago. Others might check if they are experiencing it or whether it is a glitch with my hardware. If it is at all widespread, developers should know. Since upgrading to the 2.6.10 kernels my hard disk started parking 2 to 3 times a minute, at which rate it will reach its advertised 'end of life' engineering limit on the number of head parks in less than a year. This is invisible in use: no unusual disk activity is noticable. I discovered it by noticing that my drive's Load_Cycle_Count, as reported by the smartctl, had increased as much in two weeks as in the previous 9 months. My current kernel is 2.6.10-1.766_FC3, but earlier 2.6.10 kernels did the same. Booting back into a 2.6.9 kernel fixes the problem. I fixed the problem for myself in 2.6.10 by adding "hdparm -B254 /dev/hda" to my startup scripts. It is buzilla-ed at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=146628 --walter
