SMART SSD based errors

[Kedar]

Hi,
We are using the latest smart dll, to check the SMART parameters. But still our management have some doubts related to the below questions.

1.Does it look for errors on SSD based disk? If Yes what are parameters.
2.What error codes are defined for alerting?
3.How are threshold for temperature?
4.What manufacturer hard drives are supported?

Please help me for the above queries.

Thanks & Regards,
Kedar.

[David (PassMark)]

In answer to your questions,

1) The SMART standard is all about hard drives monitoring themselves for potential problems. Our software just transfers the data being collected inside the drive to the screen, or in the case of the DLL to your application. This is the case both with SSDs and traditional HDDS. I don't know if you would describe this as "looking for errors" or not.

2) SMART itself doesn't do any alerting. It just provides the data to an application, which must decide what action to take. What the drive does do is provide thresholds, so from the data you can see if any value has exceeded a threshold (which would have been set during the drive's design process).

3) Depends on the drive and it will be set by the drive's manufacturer.

4) You can find a list of supported drives here,
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_list.php
But there are circumstances where you can't collect the data, despite the drive being supported. e.g. when it is connected via an old USB to IDE bridge.

[Kedar]

Hi David,
Thanks for the quick reply.
Please find the feedback below.

1) The SMART standard is all about hard drives monitoring themselves for potential problems. Our software just transfers the data being collected inside the drive to the screen, or in the case of the DLL to your application. This is the case both with SSDs and traditional HDDS. I don't know if you would describe this as "looking for errors" or not.
- OK pass mark support SSD as per your comments, just let us know what parameters are we looking at example temperature.

2) SMART itself doesn't do any alerting. It just provides the data to an application, which must decide what action to take. What the drive does do is provide thresholds, so from the data you can see if any value has exceeded a threshold (which would have been set during the drive's design process).
- DLL gives us the vaule and status as OK/Not OK which we used further for alerting end customer, on what basis does DLL decides the threshold as OK or not OK. To be specific is passmark tool programmed to follow threshold that disk manufacture provides, if yes how frequently is this updated in tool?

3) Depends on the drive and it will be set by the drive's manufacturer.
OK


4) You can find a list of supported drives here, http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_list.php
But there are circumstances where you can't collect the data, despite the drive being supported. e.g. when it is connected via an old USB to IDE bridge.
- OK

Check this scenario for Toshiba hard drive, wherein there was problem with drive and passmark failed to show.


SMART ATTRIBUTES:

ID Description Raw Value Status Value Worst Threshold

------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------

5 Reallocated Sector Count 54 OK 98 98 10

C5 Current Pending Sector Count 38 OK 100 100 0

Can you confirm if above 2 smart ids values are OK and what should be the right value to look for?


Thanks & Regards,
Kedar B.

[Kedar]

Hi David,
Any inputs from your side, for the above SMART ATTRIBUTES.
Your inputs will help us to resolve the SMART issue.

Waiting for your reply.

Thanks & Regards,
Kedar B.

[David (PassMark)]

The drive manufacturers decide the attributes which are monitored, not us.
The drive manufacturers decide the thresholds levels which indicate a failure, not us. The thresholds are hard coded into the drives themselves. Not set in our software.

SMART only monitors certain aspects of the drive. There are lots of ways a drive can fail that preclude the drive from giving advanced warning of the impending failure. i.e. it isn't foolproof.

[scc]

Hi,
We are using the latest smart dll, to check the SMART parameters. But still our management have some doubts related to the below questions.

1.Does it look for errors on SSD based disk? If Yes what are parameters.
2.What error codes are defined for alerting?
3.How are threshold for temperature?
4.What manufacturer hard drives are supported?

Please help me for the above queries.

Thanks & Regards,
Kedar.

For number 3 I don't think that there is an answer. I've got a SSD and DiskCheckup continuously reports that it over 100 degrees Celsius. When I first saw that I shut down the computer, unplugged it and investigated it myself. If the drive really had been that hot both it and it's mounting bracket would have been too hot to touch for hours, and my hand likely wouldn't have been able to get near them with feeling warmth.

This was not the case. I can only conclude that the drive was reporting it temperature wrong, if at all was the reported value is 128, which is quite possibly a null value (It's 2^7) so I can only conclude that the drive has no ability to monitor it's tempture