DiskCheckup Query

[Anonymous]

Just downloaded and tried this.

Results :-

IDE REGISTERS:
Features: 0x0 Sector Count: 0x0 Sector Number: 0x1
Cylinder Low: 0x0 Cylinder High: 0x0 Drive Head: 0xA0
Command: 0x50

DRIVE INFORMATION: Serial Number: VR523902 FirmWare Rev: 3.05 Model Number: ST38641A
Cylinders: 16383 Heads: 16 Sectors per track: 63
Cur Cyls: 16676 Cur Heads: 16 Cur Sectors/Track: 63
Bytes per track: NA Bytes per sector: NA
Gen Config: 3162 Buffer Type: 0 Buffer Size: 256
Vendor Unique: 0 0 0 More Vendor Unique: 0x8020
ECC Size: 0 Double Word IO: 0 Capabilities: 12032
PIO Timing: 512 DMA Timing: 512 BS: 7
Current Sector Capacity: 16809408 Total Addressable Sectors: 16809660
Mult. Sector Stuff: 288 Single Word DMA: 0 Multi Word DMA: 7

SMART ATTRIBUTES:
ID Description Raw Value Status Value Worst Threshold
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Raw Read Error Rate 66938175 OK 106 96 0
3 Spin Up Time 0ms OK 70 70 0
4 Start/Stop Count 1884 OK 99 99 20
5 Reallocated Sector Count 15 OK 100 100 36
7 Seek Error Rate 124671271 OK 60 40 30
A Spin Retry Count 0 WARNING 100 100 97
C Power Cycle Count 3203 OK 97 97 20
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Count 0 OK 200 200 0

Can anyone explain why there is aWARNING for Spin Retry Count ?

AIDA and Ontrack SystemSuite both give the drive a clean bill of health.

Why is the threshold - 97 ?

It seems a weird figure to me, everything else being OK.

Is my H/D on its way out ?

Any advice gratefully received.

[ferg]

When we originally wrote DiskCheckup, we thought that it might be a useful feature to warn users when an attribute fell to within a certain limit close to the threshold (within 10%, I think). We called this a WARNING. The idea was that a warning would alert users to imminent failure before an actual fail condition was detected.

However, due to the recent amount of support mail concerning warnings, and the huge variety of drives and attribute thresholds, we believe that the feature is most likely misleading and we will be removing it in the next version, which will be available from the PassMark website within the next few days.

I agree that the a threshold value of 97 seems strange, but many thresholds we've seen in testing are not 'rounded' numbers. This is the threshold value that the drive manufacturer has set. SMART attributes and thresholds represent a normalised set of values based on reliability metrics which vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and drive to drive. Though these values give the end user an approximation of drive reliablility, their full meaning is best understood by the manufacturers.

As to whether your hard drive is on the way out, it is difficult to say. The 'Spin Retry Count' attribute is certainly dangerously close to the threshold, however, it may have been sitting at this level for some time now. I would suggest monitoring this attribute over the next few weeks to see if you notice a decline. If the attribute does indeed fall below the threshold, then it is time to start worrying.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the advice, I'll watch it carefully.

What I really need is something automatically running and monitoring the SMART details on an hourly ? basis.

You don't have such a product - Is there anything available commercially ?

[David (PassMark)]

At the moment our DiskCheckup program doesn't run automatically on a periodic basis.

We'll add this to our list of things to do. But as it is a free program, it is not always at the top of our priority list for new development.

However we also do a fair amount of paid custom software development work which might be an option if you have specific urgent requirements.

Regards
David
PassMark