====== Reduce hard drive load/unload cycles ======

In case with smartctl you notice that the load/unload cycles counter increases very rapidly, there is a way to decrease that with hdparm.

E.g. for sda:
<code bash>
sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
</code>

This setting is retained after at reboot.
**254** means low power saving by APM
**255** means disables, but 254 is a more effective setting because 255 is not always implemented and 254 is instead almost the equivalent of disabled.
**127** or lower means not only a more frequent load/unload but it also starts to turn off the spinning.

To check the current value for sda
<code bash>
sudo hdparm -B /dev/sda
</code>