How smart is S.M.A.R.T.?

[George Toft]

How many [thousand] hours on the drive?  I think you're gambling if you 
have more than 26,000 hours (3 years) and ESPECIALLY if it's really a 
Hitachi drive.  Seagate bought Hitachi recently, and from what I've 
seen, are selling used Hitachi drives as "new" Seagate drives - check 
the model number and the run hours!

Hard drives are killing me this year - I've spent over 80 hours in 
rework because of failed drives - especially with Seatachi drives (see 
above).  80 hours of rework at no pay is a painful lesson.

Regards,

George Toft

On 9/11/2014 4:06 PM, parabellum7 at yahoo.com wrote:
> Greetings!
>
>
> I have a 500GB Seagate ST3500312CS SATA drive salvaged from a decommissioned DVR. The DVR's OS said SMART status OK. The latest Seatools disk utility from the Seagate website says the drive is A-OK (short test, long test, full erase, re-test) no errors found.
>
> However, the Gnome disk utility in Mint 17 says 'Threshold not exceeded' and 'Disk is OK, 178 bad sectors'.
>
> Some other SMART attributes displayed:
>
> ID1		Read Error Rate: 152141757
> ID5  	Reallocated Sector Count: 178 sectors
> ID187 	Reported Uncorrectable Errors: 0 sectors
> ID198	Uncorrectable Sector Count: 0 sectors
> ID199	UDMA CRC Error Rate: 0
>
>
> GSmart Control 0.8.7 is reading the same thing, 178 sectors, but also says it's OK.
>
> running an e2fsck from gparted reports 0 bad blocks.
>
> I've also retested in another machine with different cables to minimize the possibility of bogus hardware or BIOS issues, but the results remain the same.
>
> Seagate's website has a FAQ that says their tools should be the final say as they're designed to work correctly with their drives.
>
> Normally a bad sector or two wouldn't bother me, I have drives that have been running for years like that. I just keep backups fresh and check for bad sector growth. A few bad sectors is within spec and that's why HDD's have a reserved area. Yet somehow 178 sectors seems like a lot.
>
> Should I trust this drive for anything more than a paperweight?
>
> Should I trust anything with the words 'smart', 'affordable', or 'free' in the name?  ;]
>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> --Kenn
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