HardDisk killer redux

[Derek Broughton]

Nils Kassube wrote:

> Donn wrote:
>> Well, I got smartmontools installed, and I get this kind of readout --
>> anyone free to interpret?

I read every single line of that humungous bug-tracker report, and nobody
ever did explain those...
>>
>> root at ddm:/etc# smartctl -a /dev/hda | grep Load_Cycle_Count
>> 193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age
>> Always       -       0
> 
> The interesting part is the last number which is 0. I suppose your drive
> doesn't count load/unload cycles.

That's my guess too.
> 
>> I hope "Old_age" doesn't mean my drive's about to croak ... :(
> 
> My laptop disk also has this "Old_age" and the counter is nowhere near the
> proposed 300000 cycles for a disk life. Therefore, I think your disk is
> not yet dying. 

Mine too.  This is the "TYPE" - which I guess means the type of counter, not
the current status of the drive.  So my interpretation was that "pre_fail"
means when the counter hits the THRESH value, it's in imminent danger of
failure, and for an "old_age" counter it just means it's "old", but they
have no real way of knowing if it's likely to fail soon.  After all, most
of the figures I've seen for this particular counter is that the
manufactures expect the drive to survive up to numbers
like "300,000-600,000" (ie, 450,00 +/- 150,000). A 33% margin of error
means it's not terribly predictable :-)

> Maybe you could find some more information in the smartctl 
> documentation.

What?  RTFM??  Where's the fun in that?
-- 
derek