Is Ubuntu running in acpi/ahci mode?

One final question (I think ). I've searched and searched and can't find a way to tell which mode Ubuntu is running on, with achi or not. How do I find out? I'd like to know because I have a western digital scorpio blue, and I've noticed it never parks its heads while in linux (I have power manager set to never spin down the hard drive), yet in any flavor of windows the HDD ignores the OS and spins down every 8 seconds of inactivity. Western Digital calls it their "intellipark" feature, which I've read can cause premature HDD failure because of the constant parking/unparking of the heads.
So how can I tell? I'd like to know why in linux the hdd obeys the OS. Thanks if you can help.

 

I have a secondary question. Is it normal that sudo only requires my password once? I could have sworn I remember it always asking every time I opened a new terminal, but now it only asks one time, until I reboot, then it asks just once more. However synaptic package manager asks every time. I just want to make sure my computer is running in "safe mode" and not as root.

 

I always do sudo su. That asks me for the password once, but i'm then root in the terminal.

 

Cant you just check you BIOS?

It could also have something to do with ext3 and ext4 being 'journaling' filesystems instead of ntfs wich is indexed.

not that like i know jack about filesystems, i was just guessing.

 

Code:

dmesg | grep -i ahci

Also, you're confusing ACPI/APM and AHCI. The main advantage of AHCI is NCQ. To figure out how aggressive your disk power management is, you can run:

Code:

sudo hdparm -B /dev/sda

From man hdparm:

So to disable power management entirely, you'd run:

Code:

sudo hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda

As long as you are not logging in as root when you first start the computer, you are running as a normal user, which is safe. Once you are prompted for a password by gksu or gksudo it should prompt you for the password and give you a checkbox that selects whether to save the password for the entire session. If you are configuring something from the System->Administration menu, or generally configuring any system settings, it should ask you again, and you will notice a lock icon in the tray. If you hover over it it will say "click the icon to drop all elevated privileges." This is part of policykit-gnome, and you can see the polkit manpage for details.

 

Thanks allurgroceries! Your post was very helpful! Indeed my HDD is running in AHCI mode, and the APM level is at 254. I was reading some threads before about Western Digital's "intellipark" feature and that many were reporting very high stop/start counts, and I noticed under Ubuntu my HDD never spins down and the start/stop count has remained low, now I know why.
Thanks again, you were incredibly helpful!