REC hdtune vs hdsentinel

[dask]

Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum and I hope I posted it on the wright section.
I have a little concern with an external hdd I recently bought. Hdtune and hdsentinel give a different opinion on the healthrate of my new ext hdd.
What do you guys think? Do I just ignore the hdtune warning and go trusted with the hdsentinel report?

Hdtune tests:




hdSentinel report:
look at attachment

Attachments

Disk report 2012 03 10.txt

(15.34 KiB) Downloaded 551 times

[dask]

Something went wrong with the screenies above.

[img=180,158]http://s18.postimage.org/v8g0uunpx/image.jpg[/img]

[img=165,180]http://s18.postimage.org/53yplq93p/image.jpg[/img]

[Vulcan]

This seems to be due to the different interpretations by those 2 utilities, of the value of attribute 196 (Reallocation Event Count). Raw value = 0x00001B040000. The "cooked" value is still at 100. (It's difficult to see those small HDTune thumbnail images that are included and I didn't see any link to view the full-size images I hope I'm looking at the correct numbers...)

IMHO that combination of raw & cooked values suggests that Fujitsu are storing something else in those middle 2 bytes of the 6 byte raw value. The low order 2 bytes are zero, and taking that with "cooked" value, I would not treat this as being the sign of a problem.

I expect that HDTune is seeing the non-zero raw value and treating that as a warning, but is not considering that the "cooked" value is still 100, and that the low order 2 bytes are zero - which would be highly unusual if there was really a problem. It's all down to interpretation, but remember that the raw values are "vendor specific" and so they don't officially need to contain anything which can be used by humans or 3rd-party utilities, although by convention many of them do so.

So that's my view - others may have a different view.

[fzabkar]

I agree with everything that Vulcan has said.

I would just like to contribute one more observation, and that is that the uppermost 16 bits of the Reallocated Sector Count attribute store the total number of spare sectors remaining until the SMART threshold is reached. Currently this number is 0x07D0 (= 2000 decimal). If and when sectors are reallocated, this value will be decremented by a corresponding amount.

[dask]

I posted new links for the thumbs (2nd post).
Thanks for the analysis, I don't know that much about writing data on the hdd but now I'm a little bit releaved the REC is not always a defined error. I'm gonna stick with the report of hdsentinel.

[Vulcan]

I posted new links for the thumbs (2nd post).

Thanks. FYI that posting had not been approved by the moderator when I replied, so it was not showing until recently - therefore even though you typed it before I replied, I couldn't see it then.

I'm a little bit releaved the REC is not always a defined error

I don't know what you mean by "REC". I don't see that word on the HDTune screenshots that you show.

[dask]

I don't know what you mean by "REC". I don't see that word on the HDTune screenshots that you show.

I referred to the "Reallocation Event Count".

[STeALtH]

This seems to be due to the different interpretations by those 2 utilities, of the value of attribute 196 (Reallocation Event Count)...

Vulcan maybe he's abbreviating Reallocation Event Count as REC, would that makes sense?

EDIT: Snap lol

S

[Vulcan]

@dask,

I referred to the "Reallocation Event Count".

Thanks Now I remember that I guessed this yesterday when I replied, but I wasn't sure.

In general Reallocation Event Count is very rarely seen incrementing, without an increase in the Reallocated Sector Count. Only failed reallocations would cause "REC" to increase without Reallocated Sector Count also increasing - and for that to happen, there is likely to be a big enough problem that you'll see signs of it elsewhere in the SMART data. Therefore "REC" is not one of the common attributes to be checking for early warning of a problem. Reallocated Sector Count (attribute 5) is one of the more common problem indicators (along with Current Pending Sectors).

However, as always, you cannot rely on the SMART data to give any early warning of a problem!

Hope that overview helps. Good luck

@STeALtH,

Indeed, snap again!