SMART Stats Advice for 3 Seagate ST31500341AS Drives

[saltyzip]

Hi,
The three drives below reside in my WHS and are about 2 years old. They are all being reported as drives to keep an eye on by the WHS SMART Monitoring Add-In. High Spin up count, bad sectors and CRC errors seem to be the main red flags it raises. I have run the SeaTools Long Drive Self Test on each drive and it passed ok as does any other test i throw at the drives. All my other WHS drives are in good shape, a mixture of Samsung and WD, only the Seagates seem troublesome which is putting me off buying this brand in future. Is it worth me low level formatting these drives or should I just leave them be for now as they are operating within normal parameters?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Drive 1: ST31500341AS (9VS13Q15)

ID Attribute Description Threshold Value Worst Data Status
01 Raw Read Error Rate 6 120 99 242125984 OK: Value is normal
03 Spinup Time 0 100 92 0 OK: Always passes
04 Start/Stop Count 20 100 100 813 OK: Value is normal
05 Reallocated Sector Count 36 100 100 4 OK: Value is normal
07 Seek Error Rate 30 84 60 286079957 OK: Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 88 88 10762 OK: Always passes
0A Spinup Retry Count 97 100 100 5 OK: Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 20 100 100 704 OK: Value is normal
B8 End-to-End Error 99 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
BB Reported Uncorrectable Errors 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
BC Command Timeout 0 100 99 327923 OK: Always passes
BD High Fly Writes 0 1 1 1106 OK: Always passes
BE Airflow Temperature 45 59 49 689504297 OK: Value is normal
C2 Temperature 0 41 51 41 OK: Always passes
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 0 45 31 242125984 OK: Always passes
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
C6 Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK: Always passes
F0 Head Flying Hours 0 100 253 10761 OK: Always passes
F1 <vendor-specific> 0 100 253 633737365 OK: Always passes
F2 <vendor-specific> 0 100 253 3937030264 OK: Always passes

Drive 2: ST31500341AS (9VS084KL)

ID Attribute Description Threshold Value Worst Data Status
01 Raw Read Error Rate 6 117 99 154774345 OK: Value is normal
03 Spinup Time 0 93 91 0 OK: Always passes
04 Start/Stop Count 20 74 74 27510 OK: Value is normal
05 Reallocated Sector Count 36 100 100 1 OK: Value is normal
07 Seek Error Rate 30 80 60 111787698 OK: Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 86 86 12741 OK: Always passes
0A Spinup Retry Count 97 100 100 217 OK: Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 20 100 100 829 OK: Value is normal
B8 End-to-End Error 99 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
BB Reported Uncorrectable Errors 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
BC Command Timeout 0 100 3 78906686 OK: Always passes
BD High Fly Writes 0 1 1 346 OK: Always passes
BE Airflow Temperature 45 60 47 689504296 OK: Value is normal
C2 Temperature 0 40 53 40 OK: Always passes
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 0 44 24 154774345 OK: Always passes
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
C6 Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 1 109755 OK: Always passes
F0 Head Flying Hours 0 100 253 12598 OK: Always passes
F1 <vendor-specific> 0 100 253 1163078325 OK: Always passes
F2 <vendor-specific> 0 100 253 3242007367 OK: Always passes

Drive 3: ST31500341AS (9VS1D6X3)

ID Attribute Description Threshold Value Worst Data Status
01 Raw Read Error Rate 6 118 99 180518756 OK: Value is normal
03 Spinup Time 0 95 92 0 OK: Always passes
04 Start/Stop Count 20 86 86 14678 OK: Value is normal
05 Reallocated Sector Count 36 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
07 Seek Error Rate 30 78 60 80677995 OK: Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 89 89 9671 OK: Always passes
0A Spinup Retry Count 97 100 100 92 OK: Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 20 100 100 652 OK: Value is normal
B8 End-to-End Error 99 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
BB Reported Uncorrectable Errors 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
BC Command Timeout 0 100 98 4 OK: Always passes
BD High Fly Writes 0 1 1 368 OK: Always passes
BE Airflow Temperature 45 65 49 639107107 OK: Value is normal
C2 Temperature 0 35 51 35 OK: Always passes
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 0 40 28 180518756 OK: Always passes
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
C6 Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK: Always passes
F0 Head Flying Hours 0 100 253 9558 OK: Always passes
F1 <vendor-specific> 0 100 253 2302807583 OK: Always passes
F2 <vendor-specific> 0 100 253 3298732940 OK: Always passes

[fzabkar]

I wouldn't worry too much about the few bad sectors at the moment. However, I notice that the temperatures have been above 50C, and that each drive has hit the High Fly Writes threshold. I don't know significant the latter is in terms of data integrity.

However, I wonder if drive #2 has some problems:

0A Spinup Retry Count 97 100 100 217
BC Command Timeout 0 100 3 78906686
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 1 109755

The actual number of Command Timeouts is not 78906686, but 1342. The attribute is best viewed in hexadecimal.

78906686 in decimal = 0x04B4053E in hex
0x053E in hex = 1342 in decimal

The Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate would suggest a communications problem. You may like to switch cables and/or SATA ports to see if the problem stays with the drive.

I don't know if it applies in your case, but see this thread where a vertically mounted drive developed bad sectors in the vertical position, but not horizontal:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Internal-A ... /m-p/42506

Notice that three new drives behaved in exactly the same way, so it may be a design issue rather than a genuine fault.