Does HDD SMART ever be useful for you?

[BRiT]

Take
197 - Current pending sector count
Is 197 good? is it bad? i dont know
how many does it have to increase by before its a problem 1? ,2? 10? I dont know
do I have to run the program every day and write down the numbers?
when you say increasing in short time whats that? Minutes, days, weeks I dont know

It is not a result, the 197 number is the numeric ID for the indicator known as "Current pending sector count". Its like its Social Security ID or its Tax ID. It is not the reading of that field. A good result for that field is 0.

Once again, do some reading like the previously included wiki article.

 

[Davros]

I read the wiki
it tells me for example
Soft Read Error Rate low is good, which is something at least, but what is low? is 100 low, is it high I have no idea

 

[BRiT]

A bit dated, but provides some more info: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-smart-stats-indicate-hard-drive-failures/

 

[BRiT]

Snippets to entice you to read full article:

Let’s stay focused on SMART stats and take a look at the table below which shows percentage of both failed and operational drives, which are reporting a RAW value that is greater than zero for the SMART stat listed.


While no single SMART stat is found in all failed hard drives, here’s what happens when we consider all five SMART stats as a group.

Operational drives with one or more of our five SMART stats greater than zero – 4.2%

Failed drives with one or more of our five SMART stats greater than zero – 76.7%

That means that 23.3% of failed drives showed no warning from the SMART stats we record. Are these stats useful? I’ll let you decide if you’d like to have a sign of impending drive failure 76.7% of the time. But before you decide, read on.

 

[orangpelupa]

I think both of my HDD have false positive SMART failure status.

it has been marked as fail for years. The pending sector count also has been on the danger zone for years.

While my clicking HDD and Uber slow SSD have false negative SMART failure status.

BTW for those looking to buy used HDD, be careful, some sellers mislabel their HDD (firecuda label but uts actually barracuda) and wiped the SMART data (the data shows zero used hours, etc)

 

[BRiT]

Those are not false positives for the spinners. Those are real concerns.

 

[orangpelupa]

Those are not false positives for the spinners. Those are real concerns.

currently its been 3 or 4 years with that smart condition. Now im curious when it will croak. (1 HGST, 1 Seagate)

 

[Lightman]

I just found this thread and wanted to select all voting options ...

I've seen few thousands of drives through the years and SMART saved me a lot of problems with failing drives at customers. I've seen it where drive failed without a warning, like the heads just fell off, and I had one drive in my son's PC as a game storage which was showing relocated sectors back in 2011 (Samsung SpinPoint 640GB). It lasted till we retired it last year without any problems

So yes, in majority of cases S.M.A.R.T. is useful and does what it says!

 

[Malo]

currently its been 3 or 4 years with that smart condition. Now im curious when it will croak. (1 HGST, 1 Seagate)

And that's fine for a single drive for a consumer that may not be too worried about the data on the drive. But even for my home NAS with 5 drives, having periodic tests and warnings about possible failures, I replace them ASAP. For Enterprise? Notification goes to relevant department and drives are replaced at whatever schedule they have set based on redundancy and severity, usually within 24 hours.

 

[orangpelupa]

The one with failed smart finally starting to break. The transfer rate is erratic.

The pc usually runs 24/7. Now I shut it down for the night and I'll replace the hdd in the morning or noon if I can find a computer shop that's open.

Hopefully this is not a mistake. As broken hdd could be unable to spin up after turned off.