Minimizing Hard Disk Drive Failure and Data Loss/Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology

Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T., is a monitoring system for computer hard disks to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures.

Background

Fundamentally, hard drives can suffer one of two classes of failures:

• Predictable ones, when some failure modes, especially mechanical wear and aging, happen gradually over time. A monitoring device can detect these, much as a temperature dial on the dashboard of an automobile can warn a driver — before serious damage occurs — that the engine has started to overheat.
• Unpredictable ones, when other failures may occur suddenly and unpredictably, such as an electronic component failing.

Mechanical failures, which are usually predictable failures, account for 60 percent of drive failure. The purpose of S.M.A.R.T. is to warn a user or system administrator of impending drive failure while time remains to take preventative action — such as copying the data to a replacement device. Approximately 30% of failures can be predicted by S.M.A.R.T. Work at Google on over 100,000 drives has shown little overall predictive value of S.M.A.R.T. status as a whole, but that certain sub-categories of information S.M.A.R.T. implementations might track do correlate with actual failure rates - specifically that following the first scan error, drives are 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days than drives with no such errors and first errors in reallocations, offline reallocations, and probational counts are also strongly correlated to higher failure probabilities.

Pctechguide's page on S.M.A.R.T. (2003) comments that the technology has gone through three phases:

"In its original incarnation SMART provided failure prediction by monitoring certain online hard drive activities. A subsequent version improved failure prediction by adding an automatic off-line read scan to monitor additional operations. The latest SMART III technology not only monitors hard drive activities but adds failure prevention by attempting to detect and repair sector errors. Also, whilst earlier versions of the technology only monitored hard drive activity for data that was retrieved by the operating system, SMART III tests all data and all sectors of a drive by using off-line data collection to confirm the drive's health during periods of inactivity."

SMART Information

The technical documentation for SMART is in the AT Attachment standard.

The most basic information that SMART provides is the SMART status. It provides only two values, "threshold not exceeded" or "threshold exceeded". Often these are represented as "drive OK" or "drive fail" respectively. A "threshold exceeded" value is intended to indicate that there is a relatively high probability that the drive will not be able to honor its specification in the future: that is, it's "about to fail". The predicted failure may be catastrophic or may be something as subtle as inability to write to certain sectors or slower performance than the manufacturer's minimum.

The SMART status does not necessarily indicate the drive's reliability now or in the past. If the drive has already failed catastrophically, the SMART status may be inaccessible. If the drive was experiencing problems in the past, but now the sensors indicate that the problems no longer exist, the SMART status may indicate the drive is OK, depending on the manufacturer's programming.

The inability to read some sectors is not always an indication that the drive is about to fail; one way that unreadable sectors can be created even when the drive is functioning within specification is if the power fails while the drive is writing. Even if the physical disk is damaged in one location so that a sector is unreadable, the disk may be able to use spare space to replace the bad area so that the sector can be overwritten.

More detail on the health of the drive may be obtained by examining the SMART Attributes. SMART Attributes were included in some drafts of the ATA standard but were removed before the standard became final. The meaning and interpretation of the attributes varies between manufacturers and is sometimes considered a trade secret by the manufacturer. Attributes are discussed further below.

Drives with SMART may optionally support a number of 'logs'. The error log records information about the most recent errors that the drive has reported back to the host computer. Examining this log may help to determine whether computer problems are disk-related or caused by something else.

A drive supporting SMART may optionally support a number of self-test or maintenance routines, and the results of the tests are kept in the self-test log. The self-test routines can be efficiently used to detect any unreadable sectors on the disk so that they may be restored from backup (for example, from other disks in a RAID). This helps to reduce the risk of a situation where one sector on a disk becomes unreadable, then the backup is damaged, and the data is lost forever.

Standards and implementation

Many motherboards will display a warning message when a disk drive approaches failure. Although an industry standard among most major hard drive manufacturers, there are some remaining issues and much proprietary "secret knowledge" held by individual manufacturers as to their specific approach. As a result, S.M.A.R.T. is not always implemented correctly on many computer platforms due to the absence of industry-wide software & hardware standards for S.M.A.R.T. data interchange.

From a legal perspective, the term "S.M.A.R.T." refers only to a signaling method between internal disk drive electromechanical sensors and the host computer — thus a disk drive manufacturer could include a sensor for just one physical attribute and then advertise the product as S.M.A.R.T. compatible. For example, a drive manufacturer might claim to support S.M.A.R.T. but not include a temperature sensor, which the customer might reasonably expect to be present.

Some S.M.A.R.T.-enabled motherboards and related software may not communicate with certain S.M.A.R.T.-capable drives, depending on the type of interface. Few external drives connected via USB and Firewire correctly send S.M.A.R.T. data over those interfaces. With so many ways to connect a hard drive (e.g. SCSI, Fibre Channel, ATA, SATA, SAS, SSA) it's difficult to predict whether S.M.A.R.T. reports will function correctly.

Even on hard drives and interfaces that support it, S.M.A.R.T. data may not be reported correctly to the computer's operating system. Some disk controllers can duplicate all write operations on a secondary "backup" drive in real-time. This feature is known as "RAID mirroring". However, many programs which are designed to analyze changes in drive behavior and relay S.M.A.R.T. alerts to the operator do not function when a computer system is configured for RAID support, usually because under normal RAID array operational conditions, the computer may not be permitted to 'see' (or directly access) individual physical drives, but only logical volumes, by the RAID array subsystem.

On the Windows platform, many programs designed to monitor and report S.M.A.R.T. information will only function under an administrator account. At present S.M.A.R.T. is implemented individually by manufacturers, and while some aspects are standardized for compatibility, others are not.

One of the other fundamental problems with S.M.A.R.T is that it slows performance and for this reason it is disabled by default in many motherboard BIOSes.

Attributes

Each drive manufacturer defines a set of attributes and selects threshold values which attributes should not go below under normal operation. Attribute values can range from 1 to 253 (1 representing the worst case and 253 representing the best). Depending on the manufacturer, a value of 100 or 200 will often be chosen as the "normal" value. Manufacturers that have supported one or more S.M.A.R.T. attributes in various products include: Samsung, Seagate, IBM (Hitachi), Fujitsu, Maxtor, Western Digital. These manufacturers do not necessarily agree on precise attribute definitions and measurement units; therefore the following list should be regarded as a general reference only. Note that the attribute values are always mapped to the range of 1 to 253 in a way that means higher values are better. For example, the "Reallocated Sectors Count" attribute value decreases as the number of reallocated sectors increases. In this case, the attribute's raw value will often indicate the actual number of sectors that were reallocated, although vendors are in no way required to adhere to this convention.

Known S.M.A.R.T. attributes

Legend
	Higher raw value is better		Lower raw value is better
colspan = "2" style="width: 50%; background-color: #ffa07a"	Critical	Potential indicators of imminent electromechanical failure

ID	Hex	Attribute name	Better	Description
01	01	Read Error Rate		Indicates the rate of hardware read errors that occurred when reading data from a disk surface. Any number indicates a problem with either disk surface or read/write heads.
02	02	Throughput Performance		Overall (general) throughput performance of a hard disk drive. If the value of this attribute is decreasing there is a high probability that there is a problem with the disk.
03	03	Spin-Up Time		Average time of spindle spin up (from zero RPM to fully operational).
04	04	Start/Stop Count		A tally of spindle start/stop cycles.
05	05	Reallocated Sectors Count		Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks this sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area). This process is also known as remapping and "reallocated" sectors are called remaps. This is why, on modern hard disks, "bad blocks" cannot be found while testing the surface — all bad blocks are hidden in reallocated sectors. However, the more sectors that are reallocated, the more read/write speed will decrease.
06	06	Read Channel Margin		Margin of a channel while reading data. The function of this attribute is not specified.
07	07	Seek Error Rate		Rate of seek errors of the magnetic heads. If there is a failure in the mechanical positioning system, a servo damage or a thermal widening of the hard disk, seek errors arise. More seek errors indicates a worsening condition of a disk surface and the mechanical subsystem.
08	08	Seek Time Performance		Average performance of seek operations of the magnetic heads. If this attribute is decreasing, it is a sign of problems in the mechanical subsystem.
09	09	Power-On Hours (POH)		Count of hours in power-on state. The raw value of this attribute shows total count of hours (or minutes, or seconds, depending on manufacturer) in power-on state.
10	0A	Spin Retry Count		Count of retry of spin start attempts. This attribute stores a total count of the spin start attempts to reach the fully operational speed (under the condition that the first attempt was unsuccessful). An increase of this attribute value is a sign of problems in the hard disk mechanical subsystem.
11	0B	Recalibration Retries		This attribute indicates the number of times recalibration was requested (under the condition that the first attempt was unsuccessful). A decrease of this attribute value is a sign of problems in the hard disk mechanical subsystem.
12	0C	Device Power Cycle Count		This attribute indicates the count of full hard disk power on/off cycles.
13	0D	Soft Read Error Rate		Uncorrected read errors reported to the operating system. If the value is non-zero, you should backup your data.
190	BE	Airflow Temperature (WDC)		Airflow temperature on Western Digital HDs (Same as temp. (C2), but current value is 50 less.)
190	BE	Temperature Difference from 100		Value is equal to (100 - temp °C), allowing manufacturer to set a minimum threshold which corresponds to a maximum temperature. (Seagate only?) Seagate ST910021AS: Verified Present Seagate ST3802110A: Verified Present 2007-02-13 Seagate ST980825AS: Verified Present 2007-04-05 Seagate ST3320620AS: Verified Present 2007-04-23 Seagate ST3500641AS: Verified Present 2007-06-12 Seagate ST3250824AS: Verified Present 2007-08-07
191	BF	G-sense error rate		Frequency of mistakes as a result of impact loads
192	C0	Power-off Retract Count	?	Number of times the heads are loaded off the media. Heads can be unloaded without actually powering off. (or Emergency Retract Cycle count - Fujitsu)
193	C1	Load/Unload Cycle	?	Count of load/unload cycles into head landing zone position.
194	C2	Temperature		Current internal temperature.
195	C3	Hardware ECC Recovered		Time between ECC-corrected errors.
196	C4	Reallocation Event Count		Count of remap operations. The raw value of this attribute shows the total number of attempts to transfer data from reallocated sectors to a spare area. Both successful & unsuccessful attempts are counted.
197	C5	Current Pending Sector Count		Number of "unstable" sectors (waiting to be remapped). If the unstable sector is subsequently written or read successfully, this value is decreased and the sector is not remapped. Read errors on the sector will not remap the sector, it will only be remapped on a failed write attempt. This can be problematic to test because cached writes will not remap the sector, only direct I/O writes to the disk.
198	C6	Uncorrectable Sector Count		The total number of uncorrectable errors when reading/writing a sector. A rise in the value of this attribute indicates defects of the disk surface and/or problems in the mechanical subsystem.
199	C7	UltraDMA CRC Error Count		The number of errors in data transfer via the interface cable as determined by ICRC (Interface Cyclic Redundancy Check).
200	C8	Write Error Rate / Multi-Zone Error Rate		The total number of errors when writing a sector.
201	C9	Soft Read Error Rate		Number of off-track errors. If non-zero, make a backup.
202	CA	Data Address Mark errors		Number of Data Address Mark errors (or vendor-specific).
203	CB	Run Out Cancel		Number of ECC errors
204	CC	Soft ECC Correction		Number of errors corrected by software ECC
205	CD	Thermal Asperity Rate (TAR)		Number of thermal asperity errors.
206	CE	Flying Height	?	Height of heads above the disk surface.
207	CF	Spin High Current	?	Amount of high current used to spin up the drive.
208	D0	Spin Buzz	?	Number of buzz routines to spin up the drive
209	D1	Offline Seek Performance	?	Drive’s seek performance during offline operations
220	DC	Disk Shift		Distance the disk has shifted relative to the spindle (usually due to shock). Unit of measure is unknown.
221	DD	G-Sense Error Rate		The number of errors resulting from externally-induced shock & vibration.
222	DE	Loaded Hours	?	Time spent operating under data load (movement of magnetic head armature)
223	DF	Load/Unload Retry Count	?	Number of times head changes position.
224	E0	Load Friction		Resistance caused by friction in mechanical parts while operating.
225	E1	Load/Unload Cycle Count	?	Total number of load cycles
226	E2	Load 'In'-time	?	Total time of loading on the magnetic heads actuator (time not spent in parking area).
227	E3	Torque Amplification Count		Number of attempts to compensate for platter speed variations
228	E4	Power-Off Retract Cycle		The number of times the magnetic armature was retracted automatically as a result of cutting power.
230	E6	GMR Head Amplitude	?	Amplitude of "thrashing" (distance of repetitive forward/reverse head motion)
231	E7	Temperature		Drive Temperature
240	F0	Head Flying Hours	?	Time while head is positioning
250	FA	Read Error Retry Rate		Number of errors while reading from a disk

Threshold Exceeds Condition

Threshold Exceeds Condition (TEC) is a supposed date when a critical drive statistic attribute will achieves its threshold value. When Drive Health software reports a "Nearest T.E.C." it should be considered as a "Failure date".

Prognosis of this date is based on the factor "Speed of attribute change"; how many points each month the value is decreasing/increasing. This factor is calculated automatically at any change of S.M.A.R.T. attributes for each attribute individually. Note that TEC dates are not guarantees; hard drives can and will either last much longer or fail much sooner than the date given by a TEC.

References

• "S.M.A.R.T. attribute meaning". PalickSoft. Retrieved February 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
• Zbigniew Chlondowski. "S.M.A.R.T. Site: attributes reference table". S.M.A.R.T. Linux. Retrieved Jan 17. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

External links

• Out SMART Your Hard Drive
• How S.M.A.R.T. is your hard drive?

Software

Various operating-system specific software can extend the users ability to monitor disk drive conditions through the S.M.A.R.T. interface and predict when a failure is likely to occur by logging deviations in attribute values. This software may also possess the capability to distinguish between gradual degradation over time (representing normal wear) and a sudden change (which may indicate a more serious problem).

• S.M.A.R.T site; links to several SMART tools.
• smartmontools — open-source for Linux, Mac OS X / Darwin, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Darwin, OS/2, Windows (native) and Cygwin.
• SMARTReporter — $5.99 for Macintosh, no longer open source.
• HDTune freeware diagnostic utility for Windows.
• ActiveSMART commercial software for Windows.