Which S.M.A.R.T Values to look out for?

Alberto Bj

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Hello i have bought a new SSD because my old HDD Failed and whenever i plug it and start the pc it says "S.M.A.R.T Status bad , backup and replace" so i removed it and bought a new SSD, now i just want to know which values to look out for, im using CrystalDiskInfo . i just want to know the health of my second old drive , it is a laptop drive that i removed and used for my pc as a storage drive (i think its about the age of the failed drive for i do not know the age of the drive that failed earlier, but when the laptop was brought back in late 2012 so that makes the second drive 4 years old)

Just so you guys know, before that drive had failed , it had an RSC count of 56 i think. and had some previous errors when it was first plugged in to my pc (not sure what the message said but i continued and installed instead) and its a Second hand Drive (it came from another owner and sold it for me for a fair price , sadly it only lasted one year after the purchase so i guess i was ripped off) . i didn't understand pc stuff before so yeah.. but one time the error that i received was that it is recommended to be checked by ckdsk upon booting so i just continued , i also used Seatools for DOS and made a Bootable CD and tested the drive there and found and fixed some errors, and after a few months it failed.

Now just to tell you the second drive that i use (the one that is still working and is from a laptop) had shown no errors from the time the laptop was brought the time that i transferred it to serve as a second hard drive for my desktop and the time that i used Seatools for DOS to run short and long tests. i just wanna check which values i should look out for so the same fate wont happen to it like it happened on the other drive
 

Alberto Bj

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well i was asking about the second hdd .. xD
 

Alberto Bj

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also.. when do i know if its going to fail or the RSC count. how many RSC indicates that its bad
 

RealBeast

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The best group of them, actually five used together, are highly predictive according to the Backblaze data.

Take a look at THIS.

Reallocated and pending sector count increases are what I primarily use, and then review the others if those start rising. However, note their conclusion that a reasonable number of drives fail without SMART error indication in advance, so backup as a regular practice if you have important data.
 

Alberto Bj

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i see well out of the 5 important values the second hdd has a command timeout of 2, and reported uncorrectable errors of 85 (raw value) the rest is all zero .. is that bad


 

Alberto Bj

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I see, thank you for all the help! i will keep monitoring

 

Alberto Bj

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Just one more question, or advice , what can you advice me to do besides data backup and monitoring each values.. what can i do to not shorten the life of the drive or what can i avoid doing that might shorten the life of the hard drive

 

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
I would just use it and not worry about it failing, they all do eventually if used. It may last for quite a while or not and they are not expensive to replace. Some day you will get a cannot find system error and you will know that it is time to replace.

Just have your backup data and OS disk available at that point.

If it turns out that you have some extra money at some point, I would consider buying an SSD to run the OS and programs as it really improves the speed of any system. For now, just carry on and keep an occasional eye on the SMART values.
 

Alberto Bj

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i see. thanks ! im using ADATA SP550 120GB SSD Right Now, bought for 51$ (i converted from our currency) it was the only cheapest and available ssd near our local store and i really needed to use my computer asap, i was going for the Intel SSD but they said it was out of stock , thanks anyways!