A maioria dos discos rígidos mais recentes é boa para 600.000 ciclos de carga. Na prática, você geralmente pode fazer mais, mas o risco de falha no disco rígido é significativamente aumentado . A razão para isto é que o desgaste continuado do mecanismo de estacionamento da cabeça pode resultar em danos e falhas nas cabeças de leitura / gravação.
Desligar o APM interromperá os ciclos repetidos de carga / descarga, com o aumento do consumo de calor e energia. A resposta a seguir vem da minha resposta à falha do servidor "Meu disco rígido está falhando? ":
[...] This is typically caused by the Advanced Power Management (APM) feature, which tries to conserve power by parking the heads (unloading them from the platters) after several seconds of idle. The heads are loaded back onto the platters when needed. On most systems, where hard drives get intermittent, on-and-off activity, this can cause lots of load/unload cycles to occur. To turn APM off, run the following command at a root prompt:
smartctl -s apm,off /dev/sda
This command will need to be run each time the system is power-cycled or put to sleep or the drive is otherwise powered off, as this setting is not retained when the drive is turned off.
In my experience, doing this will dramatically reduce the number of load/unload cycles and consequently the chances you'll experience this sort of failure again in the future. Do note, however, that doing this increases power consumption and drive temperature. If the drive constantly runs at temperatures in excess of 50 °C, the risk of premature failure is increased, so you may want to leave APM on (or turn it on if it is off) during the warmer months.