diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index da543684dbd..c715e54b699 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -649,6 +649,7 @@ Release 0.21.0 - Unreleased
                desired number of regions
    HBASE-2529  Make OldLogsCleaner easier to extend
    HBASE-2527  Add the ability to easily extend some HLog actions
+   HBASE-2559  Set hbase.hregion.majorcompaction to 0 to disable
 
   OPTIMIZATIONS
    HBASE-410   [testing] Speed up the test suite
diff --git a/core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java b/core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
index 02a6c167edc..db4ae3b496f 100644
--- a/core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
+++ b/core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
@@ -838,7 +838,8 @@ public class Store implements HConstants, HeapSize {
   private boolean isMajorCompaction(final List<StoreFile> filesToCompact)
   throws IOException {
     boolean result = false;
-    if (filesToCompact == null || filesToCompact.isEmpty()) {
+    if (filesToCompact == null || filesToCompact.isEmpty() ||
+        majorCompactionTime == 0) {
       return result;
     }
     long lowTimestamp = getLowestTimestamp(fs,
diff --git a/core/src/main/resources/hbase-default.xml b/core/src/main/resources/hbase-default.xml
index f93782a53dc..e3a966927a3 100644
--- a/core/src/main/resources/hbase-default.xml
+++ b/core/src/main/resources/hbase-default.xml
@@ -394,6 +394,7 @@
     <value>86400000</value>
     <description>The time (in miliseconds) between 'major' compactions of all
     HStoreFiles in a region.  Default: 1 day.
+    Set to 0 to disable automated major compactions.
     </description>
   </property>
   <property>