How to interpret "reallocated sector count" and "spin retry count"?
I have just installed the monitor and to my surprise it shows only 88% health on one of my drives:
Reallocated Sectors Count,1,100,36,Fail
Spin Retry Count,5,100,97,Fail
I don't understand how to read this: is the "raw value" the actual numbers of reallocated sectors? or some normalized value? like, is it "1 bad sector", or "1% health on that parameter"?
Isn't "value" the normalized value? in which case since it shows 100 (%?), how can it be deemed below the 36 (%?) threshold?
Same for Spin Retry Count: is it "5 retries" or "5%"? value show 100, threshold is 97: why is it marked "fail"?
The drive itself is a Seagate ST31000340AS, is 5 years old but hasn't been operational all that long (5000 hours / 222 days). It was in a NAS (in RAID1) that was only online during evenings, I switched the drives for 2TBs 4 years ago and haven't used it since.
Here's the complete SMART parameters:
Read Error Rate,76578979,114,6,OK
Spin-Up Time,0,92,0,OK
Start/Stop Count,2327,98,20,OK
Reallocated Sectors Count,1,100,36,Fail
Seek Error Rate,25059959,73,30,OK
Power-On Hours (POH),5343,94,0,OK
Spin Retry Count,5,100,97,Fail
Power Cycle Count,167,100,20,OK
End-to-End error,0,100,99,OK
Reported Uncorrectable Errors,0,100,0,OK
Command Timeout,12885098502,100,0,OK
High Fly Writes,0,100,0,OK
Airflow Temperature,504430621,71,45,OK
Temperature,30064771101,29,0,OK
Hardware ECC Recovered,76578979,51,0,OK
Current Pending Sector Count,0,100,0,OK
Uncorrectable Sector Count,0,100,0,OK
UltraDMA CRC Error Count,375,200,0,OK
Hello Benoit,
sorry for the delayed answer!
Both parameters indicate that your disk has problems. Please refer to these articles for more information:
S.M.A.R.T. Attribute: Reallocated Sectors Count
S.M.A.R.T. Attribute: Spin Retry Count
Basically the calculated hard drive's health shown as percentage is a better visual representation of S.M.A.R.T. results. In order to double-check the S.M.A.R.T. results you may want to use this freeware tool.
Thank you.
Thanks for your answer Anna! But my question was actually a rather simple math/display question: I just don't understand what the numbers represent. I mean these numbers come from somewhere right, so it could be easily documented exactly what each column says.
To re-iterate: "is the "raw value" the actual numbers of reallocated sectors? or some normalized value? like, is it "1 bad sector", or "1% health on that parameter"? Isn't "value" the normalized value? in which case since it shows 100 (%?), how can it be deemed below the 36 (%?) threshold?"
Benoit,
From my understanding, these figures mean different things to the different drive manufacturers and even between models.
I too, have always had some difficulty in understanding exactly what means what! Not helped by the fact different utilities can show a completely different set of numbers.
OK, I guess it'll have to do then :) ! Thanks for at least confirming that I'm not the only only one finding this obscure.
Hi Benoit,
My concern is erratic behaviour in the SMART parameters. One second it's populated with data, the next it vanishes and says '0' for everything. Or my thresholds all read '0' but everything else is populated. Is it constantly refreshing and re-pulling data? What's all that about? I keep getting alerts that my drives (2 different drives, two different machines) have dropped to 53%. Both of them at 53%. But when I check it always reads 100%. Is this just normal behaviour from that particular HDD manufacturer? Which leads me to believe that OCCASIONALLY they drop to 53% for one 'event' before returning to 100%. How many times does it have to drop to 53% before it needs replacing? Who knows.