HDD GURU FORUMS

Hi there:

First, let me thank you for making what looks like a superb tool for testing
drives. I haven't seen anything else that comes close. It looks like a very
powerful tool. Now I just need to learn to understand what the test results
mean.

I just replaced a friend's dying drive with a brand new Seagate 160GB
ST3160812A IDE drive. The motherboard is an Asus TUSI-M with latest
BIOS, SiS 630 chipset.

Spinrite 6 results indicated about 256,000 seek errors, but no other errors.
I tested the drive will all the Seagate long diags., and it passed them all.


When I ran MHDD scan on the drive I got these results:

Code:

11.02.2007  15:47:00   
11.02.2007  15:47:00   
11.02.2007  15:47:00    | MHDD 4.6 (c) Dmitry Postrigan | FREEWARE
11.02.2007  15:47:00   Changing mode to: IDE
11.02.2007  15:47:18   Changing mode to: IDE
11.02.2007  15:47:18   Device selected: 1
11.02.2007  15:47:19   
11.02.2007  15:47:19   MHDD>HELP
11.02.2007  15:47:37   
11.02.2007  15:47:37   MHDD>SMART ATT
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Getting SMART attributes...
11.02.2007  15:47:37   SMART READ ATTRIBUTES
11.02.2007  15:47:37   HDD: ST3160812A; FW: 3.AAJ; SN: 9LS0E3M9
11.02.2007  15:47:37   --------------------------------------------------------
11.02.2007  15:47:37   SMART attributes:
11.02.2007  15:47:37               Name                        Val Worst Raw
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att #   1 : Read error rate           :  97   94  49166809 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att #   3 : Spin up time              :  97   97  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att #   4 : Number of spin-up times   : 100  100  3 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att #   5 : Reallocated sectors count : 100  100  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att #   7 : Seek error rate           :  65   60  3274505 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att #   9 : Power-on time             : 100  100  39 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att #  10 : Spin-up retries           : 100  100  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att #  12 : Start/stop count          : 100  100  5 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 187 : Unknown                   : 100  100  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 189 : Unknown                   : 100  100  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 190 : Unknown                   :  64   60  672923684 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 194 : HDA Temperature           :  36   40  36 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 195 : Hardware ECC recovered    :  49   47  15163629 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 197 : Current pending sectors   : 100  100  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 198 : Offline scan UNC sectors  : 100  100  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 199 : Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate  : 200  200  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 200 : Write error rate          : 100  253  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:37   Att # 202 : Unknown                   : 100  253  0 
11.02.2007  15:47:44   
11.02.2007  15:47:44   MHDD>7
11.02.2007  15:47:51   
11.02.2007  15:47:51   MHDD>SCAN
11.02.2007  15:47:51   ST3160812A  LBA: 312,581,808
11.02.2007  15:47:51   SN: 9LS0E3M9  FW: 3.AAJ
11.02.2007  15:48:09   Scan started
11.02.2007  15:48:09   MODE: IDE
11.02.2007  15:48:09   Device: ST3160812A
11.02.2007  15:48:09   F/W: 3.AAJ
11.02.2007  15:48:09   SN: 9LS0E3M9
11.02.2007  15:48:09   -------------------------------
11.02.2007  15:48:09   Lap : 1
11.02.2007  15:48:09   LBA scan: 0 to 312581807
11.02.2007  16:34:26   Time spent: 00:46:15
11.02.2007  16:34:26    Blocks <   3ms = 1027486
11.02.2007  16:34:26    Blocks <  10ms = 198094
11.02.2007  16:34:26    Blocks <  50ms = 232
11.02.2007  16:34:26    Blocks < 150ms = 0
11.02.2007  16:34:26    Blocks < 500ms = 0
11.02.2007  16:34:26    Blocks > 500ms = 0
11.02.2007  16:34:26   No warnings, no errors
11.02.2007  16:34:26   Done
11.02.2007  16:42:11   
11.02.2007  16:42:11   MHDD>SCREENSHOT
11.02.2007  16:42:11   
11.02.2007  16:42:28   
11.02.2007  16:42:31   MHDD>HELP
11.02.2007  16:42:53   
11.02.2007  16:42:53   MHDD>PORT
11.02.2007  16:42:59   Changing mode to: IDE
11.02.2007  16:42:59   Device selected: 1
11.02.2007  16:44:23   MHDD>SCREENSHOT
11.02.2007  16:44:29   
11.02.2007  16:44:31   MHDD>EXIT
11.02.2007  16:44:31   MHDD: Exit


At the beginning of the disk, it seemed like almost all blocks were <3ms,
then towards the middle, it went higher to <10 and occasionally <50, then
closer to the end of the disk, it went back to mostly <3 ms.

Does this seem okay for a brand new drive? I don't know that much about
drives, Do the slow times correspond with the many seek errors in
SpinRite? Could it be AAM that is causing the seek errors?

I looked at some S.M.A.R.T. tools, but I just get confused by the attribute
statistics.



Thanks in advance for any help.



Shplad

Hi and welcome!

From this log I can tell that the drive is in perfect healthy condition!

Forget about spinrite =)

Maysoft:

Thank you very much! That is a big help for me. So that I can learn for
myself how to interpret the numbers, could you point me to a webpage or some resource that explains what "value" "worst" and "raw" mean?

Also, are there some guidelines for knowing what the seek times should be for new, medium-age and older drives?

Even though I'm a technician, I find drive test and S.M.A.R.T. results very
confusing to understand.

Finally, I have a suggestion-I hope you don't mind.
Over on Spinrite's newsgroup, users are creating a sort of database
of drives, with their drive test results, and comparing them to figure
out criteria for when a drive might be starting to fail or failing. Would
you possibly consider doing that here? It would be fairly easy to
do, I think.


Thanks again. You made a big contribution to this area.



Shplad

maysoft wrote:Hi and welcome!

From this log I can tell that the drive is in perfect healthy condition!

Forget about spinrite =)

Regarding the detailed info about SMART, I suggest you to use the following DOC: http://hddguru.com/content/en/documenta ... I-8-rev2b/

Most of these values are vendor sprcific. There is no doc on those values. Why do I know what those values mean? I used to work with hard drives... Just experience .