Anyone got a drive failing SMART?

[Xander]

I've got a little utility that does a check on the Smart status of a drive. I'm writing a script that checks a bunch of things and I want to include the ability to parse the text from this utility. Problem is, I don't have a drive here that's failing SMART to run it on. I want to get a report that fails the test.

http://beyondlogic.org/solutions/smart/smart.htm
is the address of the little utility. If you run it from CMD (saved, for example, to your C:\ folder):

C:\> smart d: > c:\fail.txt

Could you then post the result here? Thanks.

[Cambridge PC Support]

Not a fail as such, but 4 re-allocated sectors - hope it helps:


SMART & Simple for Windows NT/2000/XP V1.01
Copyright 2001-2003 Craig.Peacock@beyondlogic.org
Opened Drive \\.\c: . .

SMART Enabled : Yes
Model Number : Maxtor 6E040L0
Firmware Version : NAR61590
Serial Number : E14XP57E
Drive Size : 41.110 GB


ID Attribute Type Threshold Value Worst Raw Status
---- -------------------------- ----- --------- ----- ----- ---------- --------
[03] Spin Up Time Prefailure 63 219 219 10391 OK
[04] Start/Stop Count Advisory 0 253 253 524 OK
[05] Reallocated Sector Count Prefailure 63 253 253 4 OK
[06] Read Channel Margin Prefailure 100 253 253 0 OK
[07] Seek Error Rate Advisory 0 253 252 0 OK
[08] Seek Time Performance Prefailure 187 248 238 46289 OK
[09] Power On Hours Count Advisory 0 70 70 14114 OK
[0A] Spin Retry Count Prefailure 157 253 252 0 OK
[0B] Calibration Retry Count Prefailure 223 253 252 0 OK
[0C] Power Cycle Count Advisory 0 252 252 534 OK
[C0] Power-Off Park Count Advisory 0 253 253 517 OK
[C1] Load/Unload Cycle Count Advisory 0 253 253 1184 OK
[C2] Drive Temperature Advisory 0 253 253 39 OK
[C3] ECC Corrected Count Advisory 0 253 251 34523 OK
[C4] Re-Allocated Data Count Advisory 0 253 253 0 OK
[C5] Pending Sector Count Advisory 0 253 253 0 OK
[C6] UnCorrectable Sector Count Advisory 0 253 253 0 OK
[C7] CRC Error Count Advisory 0 199 199 0 OK
[C8] Write Error Rate Advisory 0 253 252 0 OK
[C9] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 252 0 OK
[CA] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 246 0 OK
[CB] Unknown SMART Attribute Prefailure 180 253 252 2 OK
[CC] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 252 0 OK
[CD] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 252 0 OK
[CF] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 252 0 OK
[D0] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 252 0 OK
[D1] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 188 182 0 OK
[63] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 253 0 OK
[64] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 253 0 OK
[65] Unknown SMART Attribute Advisory 0 253 253 0 OK

[Cambridge PC Support]

ok I was gonna trash that drive anyway, so I hooked it up to my test rig and smacked the hdd about a bit - Crystal Disk comes up with a "Caution" and:

[05]Reallocated Sector count: 1BF
[C5]Current Pending Sector count: 95

but when I run the smart.exe against the drive it just says this:

SMART & Simple for Windows NT/2000/XP V1.01
Copyright 2001-2003 Craig.Peacock@beyondlogic.org
Opened Drive \\.\e: . .

and that's it! I've run it a few times and always the same. CrystalDisk is still stating the same though.

So it might a no news is bad news kinda thing

[joydivision]

My general rule is if Cystal reports caution due to bad sectors, I warn the client they best get new drive as the risk of failure is high.

[Cambridge PC Support]

Originally Posted by joydivision

My general rule is if Cystal reports caution due to bad sectors, I warn the client they best get new drive as the risk of failure is high.

same here mate, once it starts it'll only get worse

[Xander]

Thanks, guys.

Originally Posted by Cambridge PC Support

ok I was gonna trash that drive anyway, so I hooked it up to my test rig and smacked the hdd about a bit - Crystal Disk comes up with a "Caution" and:

[05]Reallocated Sector count: 1BF
[C5]Current Pending Sector count: 95

but when I run the smart.exe against the drive it just says this:

SMART & Simple for Windows NT/2000/XP V1.01
Copyright 2001-2003 Craig.Peacock@beyondlogic.org
Opened Drive \\.\e: . .

and that's it! I've run it a few times and always the same. CrystalDisk is still stating the same though.

So it might a no news is bad news kinda thing

Yeah, I get the same on my SSD C drive. I've also had a few customer's drives where one of Crystal/HDtune don't show the drive but the other does.

Originally Posted by joydivision

My general rule is if Cystal reports caution due to bad sectors, I warn the client they best get new drive as the risk of failure is high.

That's the plan. What I was curious to see was how does it show up when something is not "OK" in the report. Right now, I've got my script running CDI and HDTune but my hope is if this little program can give me the same info and I can deem it as reliable as either of the other two, then I can phase out those two and fully automate the DiskCheck section of my script.

Ultimately, I can't skimp on the info. I'll still want to look for Reallocateds (etc) even if it's marked as "OK". Parsing that kind of info would be a real pain so it's looking like I can't simply parse for "Not OK" and save time that way. For the sake of things, I may have to go through the process of running CDI/HDTune and using their Copy features. Actually, I just did it with HDTune, just need to test it out further. I'll save the copied text as variables and add those variables to the report I get at the end. I'll {sigh} have to actually read it but que sera.

[Xander]

If anyone's curious to try the rough draft of this section, it's zipped below.
It needs to be run in a folder containing "DiskInfo.exe" (Crystal) and "HDtune.exe". Pops out two windows after with their results.