Disable frequent hard disk spindown in Ubuntu

By default the hdparm settings in Ubuntu are not hardware friendly so some tuning might be needed to adjust your hard disc parameters. Example for this is the Load_Cycle_Count counter which usually gets increased once in a minute without heavy disc usage. Most of the manufacturers construct their disks with MTBF of 300,000 load cycles, so you might reach it within one year. You don't want to buy a new HDD once a year, don't you? Here is a fix.

Edit /etc/hdparm.conf and add the following section (replace /dev/sda with your actual device):

/dev/sda {
apm=254
spindown_time = 242
read_ahead_sect = 2
keep_settings_over_reset = on
}