8.0 amd64 poweroff reboots

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

I have been using poweroff command (without any arguments) to power off a
laptop on NetBSD 8.0_RC1 amd64.

Recently I installed 8.0 on a usb stick and notice that poweroff now
reboots the laptop instead of powering off.

The /etc/rc.shutdown is not altered by me and neither it is different
between 8.0_RC1 and 8.0.

Do not know whether it matters - 8.0 boots from a usb stick and 8.0_RC1
from native hard drive.


An aside:

The laptop hard drive had started showing "error reading fsbn". I presume
it means disk will need a replacement soon. Hence as a precaution I
switched to a usb stick based installation.

The drive is barely 3 years old and also hosts Linux which has not shown
any warnings. Am I right in interpretation of above error or is there
something I can try with the hard drive to extend its useful life?

Mayuresh