How do I interpret the SMART data in this in-progress log from a new drive?

[Lux Brush]

Hello, I have attached the log for an in-progress run of SpinRite at level 4 on a brand new 18TB drive I just picked up. I'm not sure how to read the SMART data of the drive, so I thought I would share it here to get a better understanding of whether or not the new drive is performing well so far.

Thanks for any feedback. I'm planning on using this drive as an intermediary drive to store data as I switch between a Drobo that's behaving oddly and a new multi-disk solution.

 

[himemsys]

Hello, I have attached the log for an in-progress run of SpinRite at level 4 on a brand new 18TB drive I just picked up. I'm not sure how to read the SMART data of the drive, so I thought I would share it here to get a better understanding of whether or not the new drive is performing well so far.

Thanks for any feedback. I'm planning on using this drive as an intermediary drive to store data as I switch between a Drobo that's behaving oddly and a new multi-disk solution.

Seagates are typically very "noisy" with Seek Errors and ECC Corrections. Those values tend to move up and down a lot during a SR test. I don't like it, but honestly, I don't think it's a true indicator of drive health/imminent failure. It could just be that the other HDD manufacturers "silence" these values. Maybe someone else knows more, but like I said, whenever I scan any Seagate drive, those two SMART values tend to move up and down a lot.

The one thing that's a little more concerning is the drive temperature. It's quite high. Are you scanning the drive in a well-ventilated environment?

 

[Lux Brush]

Seagates are typically very "noisy" with Seek Errors and ECC Corrections. Those values tend to move up and down a lot during a SR test. I don't like it, but honestly, I don't think it's a true indicator of drive health/imminent failure. It could just be that the other HDD manufacturers "silence" these values. Maybe someone else knows more, but like I said, whenever I scan any Seagate drive, those two SMART values tend to move up and down a lot.

The one thing that's a little more concerning is the drive temperature. It's quite high. Are you scanning the drive in a well-ventilated environment?

Thank you for the reply.

I thought the temperature was a bit high as well. Thanks for confirming that. I have it in my small Dell OptiPlex 7060 tower. Maybe I should leave the cover off while running SR? I'm open to suggestions on how to keep it cool.

 

[Steve]

To what @himemsys wrote I'll add that while, overall, SMART is a decidedly mixed blessing, one of the most useful aspects of the combination of SpinRite + SMART is that “SMART under load” is much more revealing that “SMART at rest.”

The reason you see those ECC Corrected and Seek Errors health parameters pushed down (to 34 and 17 respectively) from the values they had at the start of SpinRite's run (of 56 and 55) is that SpinRite is really making the drive work. And it was that work that revealed the state of the drive that SMART reports.

As we know, drive's use their own logic to set these values so the only way to really interpret them is to compare them with another identical drive under identical load.

 

[Lux Brush]

To what @himemsys wrote I'll add that while, overall, SMART is a decidedly mixed blessing, one of the most useful aspects of the combination of SpinRite + SMART is that “SMART under load” is much more revealing that “SMART at rest.”

The reason you see those ECC Corrected and Seek Errors health parameters pushed down (to 34 and 17 respectively) from the values they had at the start of SpinRite's run (of 56 and 55) is that SpinRite is really making the drive work. And it was that work that revealed the state of the drive that SMART reports.

As we know, drive's use their own logic to set these values so the only way to really interpret them is to compare them with another identical drive under identical load.

Thank you for the feedback.

And thanks for listening to SN. It was my first thought: "When I get this new drive, I'm going to put it under heavy load with SR. This way I can know if the drive is good before using it." I also thought this would be a good way to test it within the return window.

 

[himemsys]

@Steve Do you believe Seagate is one of the only drive manufacturers that honestly portray the "live" results of these SMART values during a SR scan? I don't think I've ever seen any other drive manufacturer show real-time SMART changes during a SR test.

I thought the temperature was a bit high as well. Thanks for confirming that. I have it in my small Dell OptiPlex 7060 tower. Maybe I should leave the cover off while running SR? I'm open to suggestions on how to keep it cool.

At least leave the cover off. Maybe even point a desk fan at it during testing. I usually run SR on drives in a dedicated testbed (an open mid-tower case) but I do see the temps rise fairly often if I'm running a laptop drive inside of the laptop it lives in. If I'm continually having to pause and restart the scan due to drive overheating, I'll either remove the bottom laptop panel and point a fan at it, or I'll just remove the drive and scan it in my testbed. Problem solved.

 

[ColbyBouma]

https://grc.com/groups/spinrite.dev:47340

> It is a known fact that Seagate uses the "ECC corrected" and "Seek error"
> S.M.A.R.T. attributes for something else entirely. What that something else is
> we have no way of knowing as it is proprietary to Seagate.
> 

I have already explained several times here that it is documented.
https://www.disktuna.com/seagate-raw-smart-attributes-to-error-
convertertest/

Seagate RAW SMART Attributes to Error Converter – DiskTuna // Photo Repair & Photo Recovery

www.disktuna.com

 

[Steve]

Do you believe Seagate is one of the only drive manufacturers that honestly portray the "live" results of these SMART values during a SR scan? I don't think I've ever seen any other drive manufacturer show real-time SMART changes during a SR test.

For what it's worth, I've definitely seen (many) other (non-Seagate) drives' SMART data transiently suppressed by SpinRite. It seems sane and expected to me.

 

[Steve]

@ColbyBouma : It's important to separate the SMART health attributes from the raw data. As you know, thanks to our earlier changes, which you had a hand in, v6.1 is no longer attempting to interpret the raw data as v6.0 did. In return for that we're able to display many more attributes.

 

[ColbyBouma]

@ColbyBouma : It's important to separate the SMART health attributes from the raw data. As you know, thanks to our earlier changes, which you had a hand in, v6.1 is no longer attempting to interpret the raw data as v6.0 did. In return for that we're able to display many more attributes.

Yes. The new SMART screen is great. However, Seagate does weird things with ECC Corrected and Seek Errors. If I remember correctly, they encode multiple pieces of information in those fields, which is why those fields behave so differently on Seagate drives compared to other brands.

I opened a ticket in GitLab requesting that ECC Corrected and Seek Errors hide their "margin" bars when a Seagate drive is detected.

 

[tilley]

Seagates are typically very "noisy" with Seek Errors and ECC Corrections. Those values tend to move up and down a lot during a SR test. I don't like it, but honestly, I don't think it's a true indicator of drive health/imminent failure. It could just be that the other HDD manufacturers "silence" these values. Maybe someone else knows more, but like I said, whenever I scan any Seagate drive, those two SMART values tend to move up and down a lot.

The one thing that's a little more concerning is the drive temperature. It's quite high. Are you scanning the drive in a well-ventilated environment?

I get almost identical ECC and seek values on a "refurbished" 2019 ST12000007-2GR116
Temperature is 47C with bare drive sitting on vinyl floor.

 

[DanR]

I get almost identical ECC and seek values on a "refurbished" 2019 ST12000007-2GR116

The same goes for me on my one Seagate drive. SpinRite always finishes a scan on this drive with the green screen saver displayed, indicating a healthy passed drive. Even though there are typically ridiculous numbers for the ECC Corrected and Seek Error SMART attributes. The drive operates with no issues. Thus I have learned to ignore these errors on this Seagate drive.

My understanding is that Seagate uses these SMART attributes for something else entirely, which is proprietary to Seagate. SpinRite seems "SMART" enough to ignore them also.