S.m.a.r.t.

[Coffee is good :)]

Can someone explain a few things about the SMART monitoring system?

When Drive Health software reports a "Nearest T.E.C.", it should be regarded as a "Failure date". << In this case (below) the number is 50. That is not a date! What exactly does threshold mean?

My raw value for Reallocated Sectors Count is 19 (hex) 25 (dec) > Does that mean there are 25 bad sectors that are no longer usable? Does that mean I need 25 more to meet the threshold?

 

[vdub12]

Here is how reallocated sectors count works. On modern drives they no longer have sectors marked as bad like they did in the old days. The way they do it now is there is a section of the drive that is set aside for reallocated sectors. When the drive can no longer read or write to a sector rather then just making it bad the sector is mapped to a sector in this set aside area. when writing to the drive everything works as normal other then the fact that the head may have to read from multiple platers because of reallocated sectors. Once this starts to happen and more and more sectors are reallocated the drive starts to get very slow because data can no longer be read from a strait section of sectors. Rather the sectors are all over the place.

In my personal opinion once this starts its like an avalanche. It does not get better it just continues to get worse. There are some manufacturers that think its OK to have a few reallocated sectors on a new drive but in my opinion if you have any its time to change the drive.

To answer your question I believe that the smart software on the drive stops counting reallocated sectors once they hit 100. I could be wrong about this but in my experience I have never seen a drive with more then that. Another explanation is that maybe the set aside area only has 100 sectors. If this was the case you may still have bad sectors but they have no where to be reallocated to.

When it comes to SMART I would always change the drive if you are getting a caution warning status. SMART does not get better with scans or fixes. Once its tripped its like a turkey thermometer its done.

 

[14049752]

When Drive Health software reports a "Nearest T.E.C.", it should be regarded as a "Failure date".

The guide you read wasn't saying the data is giving you a date. It's saying that when that threshold is hit, you should consider the drive dead. It's worded poorly, but think of it like a doctor recording the time of death.

 

[Cybjun]

S.M.A.R.T. differs greatly from one manufactor to another, but I always explained it to newb techs & end users alike as the gray area between the drive being good and bad, once a drive is outside its manufactors acceptable range but still working and it gets marked as a S.M.A.R.T. failure. It doesn't matter how much of it is outside the acceptable range for that manufactor. YOU DONT RISK DATA!!! that is rule #1 for a professional tech.

S.M.A.R.T. failure = "Your hard drive is showing signs of a the hard drive failing its best if we replace it now before your data is unreadable. Would you like to do that now? It will be [insert your repair cost]."

 

[vdub12]

S.M.A.R.T. differs greatly from one manufactor to another, but I always explained it to newb techs & end users alike as the gray area between the drive being good and bad, once a drive is outside its manufactors acceptable range but still working and it gets marked as a S.M.A.R.T. failure. It doesn't matter how much of it is outside the acceptable range for that manufactor. YOU DONT RISK DATA!!! that is rule #1 for a professional tech.

S.M.A.R.T. failure = "Your hard drive is showing signs of a the hard drive failing its best if we replace it now before your data is unreadable. Would you like to do that now? It will be [insert your repair cost]."

I don't even wait for SMART to fail I will change a drive even if smart is in a caution mode.

 

[Coffee is good :)]

Thanks for the advice: ))))


UMMM my laptop has 25 reallocated sectors. Threshold is 50. Everything works fine right now. Should I change it soon??? :/

 

[Cybjun]

I don't even wait for SMART to fail I will change a drive even if smart is in a caution mode.

I normally dont run the utilties that monitor components like that on my personal PC. really I was referring to diagnostics on customer system with I test the hard drive & the SMART failure comes up. now that I'm thinking about it I probably with load up one to see what my hard drive says on my PCs

 

[vdub12]

Thanks for the advice: ))))


UMMM my laptop has 25 reallocated sectors. Threshold is 50. Everything works fine right now. Should I change it soon??? :/

Yes, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[vdub12]

I normally dont run the utilties that monitor components like that on my personal PC. really I was referring to diagnostics on customer system with I test the hard drive & the SMART failure comes up. now that I'm thinking about it I probably with load up one to see what my hard drive says on my PCs

Thats typical I think.

Its funny how as techs we rush to get customers systems done and back to them but it takes me a month to just get my computer out in to the shop to blow the dust out.

 

[Appleby]

Thats typical I think.

Its funny how as techs we rush to get customers systems done and back to them but it takes me a month to just get my computer out in to the shop to blow the dust out.

My whole life, my dad's comment has always been "The painter's house always needs painting."

 

[Coffee is good :)]

This program says everything is fine

EDIT: DOES this mean that there are 100 reserved sectors available to take the place of bad blocks?
That once 50 of those are used then you have reached the threshold and things are gonna get ugly??

 

[iptech]

The Reallocated Sector Count is the number of sectors identified as bad which have had their data contents reallocated to good sectors of the disk. Anything showing here would indicate a failing hard drive and you should consider replacing the drive. The threshold limit is used to create a breakpoint so S.M.A.R.T. monitoring software can flag the drive as failing.