How reliable are S.M.A.R.T. hard drive warnings?

Last night I got a S.M.A.R.T. warning that my hard drive was going to fail. I did every hard drive diagnostic I have on this machine (through Windows and through BIOS) and nothing came up. Since then I haven't gotten another warning.

Browsing around the web, I can't find definitive data on whether these warnings are reliable or not. Do any of you have experience with S.M.A.R.T. technology? Of course everything is backed up (I'm not taking any chances), but I'm wondering how worried I really should be about this.

 

I'll say it's reliable and I would take action to backup my data(it's good that you did). I have a Samsung 160GB and the SMART warned me that the drive was failing; Vista also warned me but XP did not when I had dual boot. The warning was right, the drive failed and I had to send it back for a replacement. Samsung sent me a replacement 250GB.

 

Thanks. I also just downloaded a diagnostic tool from Western Digital (the maker of the drive) to see what it can find. I'll will post back if it eventually fails.

 

SMART can be sometimes wrong. i got a warning once from SMART that one or both my drives were gonna fail, 2 years later and nothing. I think it was just some random bug or the IDE (it was a desktop) cable was slightly lose or something. it kept warning me for a few times then never again

 

Okay, well I'm glad I downloaded the Western Digital diagnostic tool. It told me exactly which parameters the SMART monitoring is looking at and exactly which of those parameters failed, and to what degree. It also says which of those parameters it monitors are covered by warranty, which I thought was pretty cool.

The SMART failure I got on this drive was the spin-up time was slower than it liked on one instance. The values for the spin-up time range from 1 to 253. Currently it's at 204, but the threshold when it raises a red flag is if it's less than 21. It said there was an instance where it was 18 and that's why it raised the warning. Here's a screenshot:



Frankly, I'm not too worried that the spin-up time was slow once. If it was another of those errors, I would be worried.

 

You've got the exact same problem I'm having, and this is my second WD drive in three months, both with the same problem.



Luckily, I bought it at a brick and mortar retailer, so I can just exchange it yet again within the return policy. Still, I'm not enjoying the need to backup and re-image my lappy every 1 1/2 months.

Just out of morbid curiosity, what's the specs of your lappy, and how heavily do you use it? Mine is a Turion MK-36 with 1gb of memory on Vista, and I use it about 12 hours a day. I'm wondering if more memory will help so that Windows doesn't thrash the drive for virtual memory as much.

 

XStylus: Is this your second drive because the other one actually failed, or because it got a SMART warning and you replaced just out of caution?

I have a DV6000T with 2GB of RAM and running Vista Home Premium. My laptop is use literally almost the entire day, except meals, so I guess around 17 hours a day of use, maybe as low as 13 hours on some days.

Interestingly enough, you have the exact same hard drive as I do.

 

It's odd that the spin-up time would fail so quickly like that. From what I've heard, leaving a PC on 24/7 helps prolong the life of the HD. But then again, that's not very practical with a notebook.

 

Leaving it on 24/7 prolongs the life of a HDD? Where did you hear that? I always read and was always told the opposite (i.e.: set the HDD to turn itself off when it's not being used to help prolong its life).

 

The first drive (same make and model, WD2500BEVS) had the exact same Spin-Up SMART error, plus I was getting extremely strange BSODs when opening certain programs. The strange BSODs looked like your average Blue Screen of Death, but the text was scrambled and unreadable, as if the video adapter was screwed. I've been a computer repair tech for 5 years, and I'd never seen a BSOD like that. I ran a thorough diagnostic, everything passed, including HD. I decided to do a restore, and figured that I might as well exchange the drive. I did so, and everything had been running normal ever since.

Yesterday, the second (replacement) drive has developed the exact same SMART error. I'm thankfully not seeing the strange BSODs though, and everything is running perfectly normal so far. If everything stays normal, I may take my time before exchanging it, but I'll do so eventually.

These problems aren't exactly endearing my trust in Western Digital's Scorpio series of drives, and my future recommendations to customers may start reflecting that.

 

There's no evidence of this either way. Some say leave it on, others say turn it off. There are many anecdotes from people who say they always do this, or always do that, and they have never had a problem. These stories have no real significance because none of those people have access to sufficient quantities of hard drives with isolated variables to make such claims valid.

If one method were better than the other, it would be obvious and there would be no question about it.

My personal preference is to turn it on once a day and off when I go to bed. Honestly you should be more worried about the electricity you would be using 24/7.

 

My laptop drive is 160GB and it's a Toshiba! I think a drive that runs at 7200RPM is likely to fail sooner because it runs hotter due to the faster RPM.

 

There's no reason to think such a thing. Any drive is tested to have a specific lifetime, and the warranty will cover that. If the drive runs hotter, most likely it is tested for that.

 

My 160gb 5400 rpm Hitachi gave me the same problem when I first received my 8510p. SMART said my HDD was in perfect shape but the spin-up was a little slow. It wasn't below the "warn" threshold but was close.

Paradoxically, as I've used my system more and more, the spin-up value has increased until it's now almost at par with the rest of the SMART values.

Maybe it's a Vista problem?

 

Forgot where I've heard it from, but basically, from what I've heard, the most strenuous activity the HD has to go through is spinning itself up to speed. When you leave the HD on 24/7, the platters don't have to go through the ordeal of trying to spin themselves up. Apparently, simply leaving the HD on without any activity (idle) is the least strenuous thing it can do, besides leaving it off.

After all, I have an almost 9-year old Dell Dimension XPS R400 desktop that still has the original 12GB(!) IBM HD. Until about 2 years ago, when I got my new laptop, that thing would stay on 24/7, unless we were going on vacation. The HD still works like a charm, but the spin-up time tends to fluctuate a bit according to S.M.A.R.T. It's also a LOUD hard drive (always has been from day 1; oddly enough, I actually prefer loud HD's. Go figure!)

Then again, your mileage may vary.

 

I understand what you mean. I can see it being a bad idea if the HDD turns off and starts up all the time (because, for example, you use your computer for a few minutes then run off to do something else and come back to use it again). Sure turning it off and back on constantly can't be good for it.
But what if you got out for a few hours, I can't imagine that leaving your HDD on for a few hours is better than turning it off for that time and then starting it up again when you get back.
What I'm trying to say is that there has to be a point where it's better to turn off the HDD and start it back up instead of leaving it on spinning for a certain amount of time.
But like orev said, I guess there's no evidence of this either way.

 

Thank you. I was just about to quote myself, but maybe this time make it bold.

 

This WD page shows that the WD2500BEVS needs 5W of power to spin up. I think that's quite high.

But what's also interesting on that page is the optional jumper for reduced power spinup. This isn't explained anywhere but I presume this feature can be used in situations where 1A current is not available (an external enclosure connected to one USB port is an example).

It may be that certain notebooks are struggling to deliver the 1A to the HDD (particularly if something is trying to access the optical drive or there are many things drawing power at 5W from the USB ports), so the WD HDD is unable to get enough power to spin up in the expected time. I would say this this is one to watch and diagnose.

The WD2500BEVS in my Zepto is showing no errors after nearly 2 months.

John

 

The two WD2500BEVS drives I used were both pulled from Passport externals. (The store I bought from didn't sell just the bare drive yet and I wanted 250gb in my laptop ASAP, so I gutted one.)

I haven't pulled the drive out of my notebook yet but I'll bet that the low power jumper is tripped.