<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Jim Kinney <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:39 AM, <<a href="mailto:krwatson@cc.gatech.edu">krwatson@cc.gatech.edu</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> SMART may not be as smart as everyone thinks.<br>
><br>
> Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population<br>
> Eduardo Pinheiro, Wolf-Dietrich Weber and Luiz André Barroso<br>
> <a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.html" target="_blank">http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.html</a><br>
><br>
</div><div class="im">> Download: PDF Version<br>
> <a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf" target="_blank">http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf</a><br>
><br>
<br>
</div>>Predictive failure accuracy is poor (in most fields and hard drives in<br>
>particular) as the physics is just not understood well enough. And the<br>
>report is from a company who regularly bakes hard drives in daily use.<br>
>Any error in SMART is currently viewed and catastrophic which is<br>
>likely overkill. However, my anecdotal evidence is that once a drive<br>
>begins to show any errors, there is a recurrence time that begins to<br>
>accelerate with each new instance of sector failure in most cases. The<br>
>big thing to watch for with the new tools is the failed sector count.<br>
>There's a limit to how many the drive can automatically recover from.<br>
>Once that limit is reached, data loss is eminent. So I tend to keep a<br>
>drive until the count is just below the upper limit of reserved<br>
>blocks.<br>
</blockquote></div><br>In my case I believe the tool reported around 1700 bad sectors. This seems like an alarming amount don't you think? I need to check it again and see if it has changed.<br><br>Best regards,<br><br>
J. D.<br>