i have a question about using linux on a laptop. Is it true that there is a setting that must be manually changed to keep the hard drive from burning out early caused by too many rotations. I left mine running all night for a couple of nights and it killed the hard drive. I just purchased a new hard drive, but want to use the right commands to prevent this phenomenon from perpetuating.

I never heard of this either....(although this may have been a problem years ago before I really got going with Linux.)

I have heard of some video cards not being configured correctly or not recognized, causing the fan to run too hot.  What distro are you using?

I tend to think that this was a weird rumor spread by Microsoft, but I can't prove that.

It's true: I've had this problem myself on my laptop. It's not about rotations, rather about too many switch-offs.

Some hard-disk manufacturers - especially on laptop disks - do not preset the HD's energy saving setting to some sensible value, because they expect the OS to tweak it as needed.

Result: if your distro doesn't tamper with that setting, the hard-disk stays at the extremest energy saving setting. Which means longer battery duration, but also lots of switch-on-switch-offs for the HD, which leads to awfully shorter disk life.

If you are hearing frequent "clicks" from your HD, you might be affected.

Diagnosis

From now on, a *ATA/IDE disk called /dev/hda is presumed. I can't offer any help for different disk types.

In a shell (a.k.a. terminal window), as root, type:

sh[RETURN]
while true;do smartctl -a /dev/hda|grep Load_Cycle_Count;sleep 120;done;[RETURN]

Now leave the computer alone for 10-15 minutes (no disk activity). You should get a new line of data every 2 minutes. If the last number on each line is constantly increasing every 1 or 2 lines, your system is affected.

Fix

In a shell (a.k.a. terminal window), as root, type:

hdparm -B254 /dev/hda[RETURN]

This sets the hard disk to "almost never auto-switch-off". You want this command to be in your startup files, so you don't have to type it manually every time you reboot ( /etc/rc.d/rc.local or /etc/rc.local is a good place to put this command in).

very helpful, thank you thank you

here is another more detailed tip I received

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DanielHahler/Bug59695