How To Interpret S.M.A.R.T data?

[Vectraat]

So I've browsed through numerous articles discussing S.M.A.R.T data, but I'm still not sure how to interpret the data. Can someone give me a bullet point explanation of how it works? This is a S.M.A.R.T scan of a brand new 10 TB WD Red drive.

 

Current/Worst/Threshold mean what--in terms that your average user would understand?

I don't know if I'm under or over the "Threshold" etc. I know what the "Attributes" mean from reading about them, just not how to interpret the values provided. 

[wONKEyeYEs]

29 minutes ago, Vectraat said:

not sure how to interpret the data

ID: The ID number of the attribute, good for comparing with other lists like Wikipedia: S.M.A.R.T.: Known ATA S.M.A.R.T. attributes because the attribute names sometimes differ.

Name: The name of the SMART attribute.

Value: The current, normalized value of the attribute. Higher values are always better (except for temperature for hard disks of some manufacturers). The range is normally 0-100, for some attributes 0-255 (so that 100 resp. 255 is best, 0 is worst). There is no standard on how manufacturers convert their raw value to this normalized one: when the normalized value approaches threshold, it can do linearily, exponentially, logarithmically or any other way, meaning that a doubled normalized value does not necessarily mean “twice as good”.

Worst: The worst (normalized) value that this attribute had at any point of time where SMART was enabled. There seems to be no mechanism to reset current SMART attribute values, but this still makes sense as some SMART attributes, for some manufacturers, fluctuate over time so that keeping the worst one ever is meaningful.

Threshold: The threshold below which the normalized value will be considered “exceeding specifications”. If the attribute type is “Pre-fail”, this means that SMART thinks the hard disk is just before failure. This will “trigger” SMART: setting it from “SMART test passed” to “SMART impending failure” or similar status.

Type: The type of the attribute. Either “Pre-fail” for attributes that are said to indicate impending failure, or “Old_age” for attributes that just indicate wear and tear. Note that one and the same attribute can be classified as “Pre-fail” by one manufacturer or for one model and as “Old_age” by another or for another model. This is the case for example for attribute Seek_Error_Rate (ID 7), which is a widespread phenomenon on many disks and not considered critical by some manufacturers, but Seagate has it as “Pre-fail”.

Raw value: The current raw value that was converted to the normalized value above. smartctl shows all as decimal values, but some attribute values of some manufacturers cannot be reasonably interpreted that way (for the details: Wikipedia: S.M.A.R.T.: Known ATA S.M.A.R.T. attributes).

 

Source-

https://ma.juii.net/blog/interpret-smart-attributes

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Known_ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes

[skimmilk5]

Here's how I interpret it: if it says there's a problem, then there's a problem. If there ain't a problem, fughetabout it.

[Vectraat]

4 hours ago, wONKEyeYEs said:

ID: The ID number of the attribute, good for comparing with other lists like Wikipedia: S.M.A.R.T.: Known ATA S.M.A.R.T. attributes because the attribute names sometimes differ.

Name: The name of the SMART attribute.

Value: The current, normalized value of the attribute. Higher values are always better (except for temperature for hard disks of some manufacturers). The range is normally 0-100, for some attributes 0-255 (so that 100 resp. 255 is best, 0 is worst). There is no standard on how manufacturers convert their raw value to this normalized one: when the normalized value approaches threshold, it can do linearily, exponentially, logarithmically or any other way, meaning that a doubled normalized value does not necessarily mean “twice as good”.

Worst: The worst (normalized) value that this attribute had at any point of time where SMART was enabled. There seems to be no mechanism to reset current SMART attribute values, but this still makes sense as some SMART attributes, for some manufacturers, fluctuate over time so that keeping the worst one ever is meaningful.

Threshold: The threshold below which the normalized value will be considered “exceeding specifications”. If the attribute type is “Pre-fail”, this means that SMART thinks the hard disk is just before failure. This will “trigger” SMART: setting it from “SMART test passed” to “SMART impending failure” or similar status.

Type: The type of the attribute. Either “Pre-fail” for attributes that are said to indicate impending failure, or “Old_age” for attributes that just indicate wear and tear. Note that one and the same attribute can be classified as “Pre-fail” by one manufacturer or for one model and as “Old_age” by another or for another model. This is the case for example for attribute Seek_Error_Rate (ID 7), which is a widespread phenomenon on many disks and not considered critical by some manufacturers, but Seagate has it as “Pre-fail”.

Raw value: The current raw value that was converted to the normalized value above. smartctl shows all as decimal values, but some attribute values of some manufacturers cannot be reasonably interpreted that way (for the details: Wikipedia: S.M.A.R.T.: Known ATA S.M.A.R.T. attributes).

 

Source-

https://ma.juii.net/blog/interpret-smart-attributes

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Known_ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes

You copy and pasted some of the stuff that I already looked over, which doesn't really address my questions.

[NelizMastr]

4 hours ago, kimsejin5 said:

Here's how I interpret it: if it says there's a problem, then there's a problem. If there ain't a problem, fughetabout it.

Same. Saves a shit ton of time.

[wONKEyeYEs]

7 hours ago, Vectraat said:

You copy and pasted some of the stuff that I already looked over, which doesn't really address my questions.

Really?

I found the answers to all your questions within that information...

Do I have to speak the implication of this?

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 26/07/2018 at 2:49 AM, kimsejin5 said:

Here's how I interpret it: if it says there's a problem, then there's a problem. If there ain't a problem, fughetabout it.

Yeah unfortunately there is no real standard for how each drive manufacturer uses the entries, so its nearly impossible to identify a problem from them, unless SMART outright says FAIL.

 

Things like seek error rate, reallocated sector count, etc sound really bad - but some manufacturers seem to use them for different things.  The entries arent to be taken literally, they are identifiers for SMART to detect drive aging.  For example an SSD of mine says 58 for power on hours, its been running for months 24/7 so clearly does not mean as implied.

 

In all the years SMART has been around I think I have only ever seen it report one drive as FAILED, the more obviously iffy drives tend to still say PASS.  Its even worse for SSDs as both the ones I had that failed, they failed during power off and there was zero warning of failure.  I just turned off the PC then when I turned it back on, no SSD detected.  One of them I just took it out of something in working order, stuck it in storage for a while then when I tried to use it again later, dead.

So while SMART might be useful in some cases, it certainly doesn't catch everything and it can worry you unnecessarily with all those figures when every manufacturer uses them differently so there is no real way to know what they ACTUALLY mean.