S.M.A.R.T. Seek error rate on Seagate 7200.10 SATA 500GB?

[GuyScharf]

I got a 500GB Seagate SATA 7200.10 drive from newegg last week. I installed it (leaving jumper in for SATA 150), created one small and one large partition, and full formatted both partitions with NTFS. I then copied about 400GB to the larger partition.

When I examine the SMART data for the drive, it reports the "value" of the Seek Error Rate as 63, Worst is 60, threshhold is 30. This is a much lower number for the seek error rate than I've seen on any other drive I have here (all of which are much older).

I'm concerned about the quality implications of this report. (Especially since the SMART failure projection tools expect the drive to fail next week--which probably isn't true.) What is typical for this drive?

Thanks.

Guy

 

[sandmanwn]

go to seagate.com and download/run SeaTools.

If it fails then return the drive to Newegg or return to Seagate for warranty.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

I have several Seagate 7200.9 and 7200.10 drives, and they all report very high seek error rates. No other manufacturer reports them with their drives.

Apparently, this is considered normal for Seagate drives.

Google's paper on hard drive longevity says basically the same thing (http://216.239.37.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf). They don't identify Seagate as the manufacturer they're talking about in reference to high seek errors in that paper, but it's obvious that it's Seagate. They also state that the seek errors that the Seagate drives report have little predictive ability on the failure. There's only 4 SMART parameters that they found that reliably predict future failure:

- Scan errors (not reported by many drives I've seen).
- Total Reallocated Sector Count
- Offline Reallocated Sector Count
- Probational Sector Count (not reported by many drives I've seen).

 

[GuyScharf]

go to seagate.com and download/run SeaTools.

Unfortunately, SeaTools doesn't find the drive! It finds my Seagate IDE drive, and two Seagate 250GB drives, but not the 500GB drive, which is attached to a Promise controller on the K8V SE Deluxe mobo.

Well, I'll be building a new system in a couple of weeks. Once the new one is running, I'll try SeaTools on it.

 

[sandmanwn]

Yep that is unfortunate.

I read that they were updating the SeaTools to increase its support for SATA drives. Looks like there is plenty of work to do.

SomeJoe probably nailed it though. SMART is probably lagging behind with their detection methods for the newer drives and sending out misleading error messages on newer hardware.

Wouldnt worry about it.

 

[dt]

if the drive were to actually die it would be on a 5 year warranty from seagate wouldnt it?

 

[GuyScharf]

if the drive were to actually die it would be on a 5 year warranty from seagate wouldnt it?

Yes the warranty would cover it; I'm not concerned about that. If what I was seeing was an early sign of failure, I would just have preferred to replace the drive before lots of data was committed to it.

 

[dt]

check out an updated S>M>A>R>T checker. I would hate to see a 500gb drive die with a ton of data on it.