Test for imminent death?

[perplex]

Are there symptoms of dieing HDDs ? I've had an IBM Deathstar 75GB in home computer for nearly 6 years now and it's worked fine. But now I'm worried that it'll go any second. The important data is backed up every day or so, so that's not too much of a problem. It'll just be the hassle of buying a new HDD and reinstalling OS etc.

 

[mikeblas]

If you have a backup, why do you need to reinstall anything?

I've become pretty preemptive about new drives myself. If their bearings start squealing or errors start showing up in the error log, I replace them.

 

[Ice Czar]

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/qual/features_SMART.htm

generally new "noise" as a mechanical indicator
the odd "click" is normal, a seek that misses followed by a recalibration
but if those increase in frequency thats a good sign of an issue, till eventually its the click of death and no seek finds anything and its in an endless recalibration and seek cycle


for electronics failure there is rarely any notice, its just unrecognized suddenly
if that occurs too often and you reaquire, backup, and reduce your "trust" in the drive if possible

S.M.A.R.T has gotten a bad rep from its "predictive" calls, often made with too little data over too short a time, not to mention it doesnt factor in errant readings, IDE on the desktop cycles through alot of on off where its likely youll get more "mistakes" in readings, whereas SMART would likely do better in a constant run enterprise situation

it is however the only ongoing monitoring protocol we have
past that there are the manufacturers diagnostics

 

[mikeblas]

What does that graph intend to show? What are the X- and Y-axis?

 

[Ice Czar]

X is time Y is the measure of some performance parameter like spinup time

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/qual/features_SMART.htm

* Head Flying Height: A downward trend in flying height will often presage a head crash.
* Number of Remapped Sectors: If the drive is remapping many sectors due to internally-detected errors, this can mean the drive is starting to go.
* ECC Use and Error Counts: The number of errors encountered by the drive, even if corrected internally, often signal problems developing with the drive. The trend is in some cases more important than the actual count.
* Spin-Up Time: Changes in spin-up time can reflect problems with the spindle motor.
* Temperature: Increases in drive temperature often signal spindle motor problems.
* Data Throughput: Reduction in the transfer rate of the drive can signal various internal problems.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/smart.html

Though attributes are drive-specific, a variety of typical characteristics can be identified:

* head flying height
* data throughput performance
* spin-up time
* re-allocated sector count
* seek error rate
* seek time performance
* spin try recount
* drive calibration retry count


The attributes listed above illustrate typical kinds of reliability indicators. Ultimately, the disc drive design determines which attributes the manufacturer will choose. Attributes are therefore considered proprietary, since they depend on drive design.