What is an HDD on your computer and what are its characteristics? What is HDD? Hard drive for computer labeling
To compare the reliability of disks in the table, pay attention to the "Disco Days" (Drive Days). If the sample is less than 50,000, then it is too early to draw conclusions.
The total bounce rate in the first quarter of 2018 of 1.84% is the lowest on record. This indirectly means that disks in general are becoming more reliable.
Total
Despite numerous advice, the choice in practice is always more difficult. When buying, you have to choose between speed and memory. But the main thing is to prioritize. This mini-instruction will help you:
- Decide on the purpose of the disk, this is a key factor when choosing a drive
- What volume hard drive you need
- Select manufacturer
External drives are just a box and HDD inside. Therefore, despite the fact that external drives are produced by many more companies. For example, an external drive may be from Transcend, but inside it will be .
As a result, if you managed to get a disk, then detailed information is always written on the hard disk itself, such as volume, model, manufacturer, and so on.
For Windows users
Through My Computer. This method is suitable for Windows OS. This is the easiest way and does not require the presence or removal of the hard drive itself. It is enough to do the following:
- click right click mice on the label "My Computer";
- click on the item "Management";
- go to the tab "Storage Devices" - "Disk Management";
- also in the "Device Manager" tab, select "Disk devices", there you will see the disk model.
The procedure may vary slightly depending on the version of Windows. In any case, in the Device Manager under "Disk Devices" you will see all the models of SSD and HDD that your operating system sees. If you know for sure that you have a hard drive and valuable data on it, well, this is a reason to turn to specialists.
For Linux users
via hdparm. Such a way. This program is automatically installed in every modern version of Linux.
To access it, you need to open a terminal and run hdparm in the console with the -i /dev/hda option. You will see the main parameters of your hard drive
With the help of programs
All will show which device you have installed. Also, this function is available in all applications for testing and analyzing the configuration of a computer. For example, in EVERSET, just select the "Storage" tab and you will see every characteristic of your Hard Drive.
Do not be surprised if you see a total volume less than stated, it is always lower than stated due to the characteristics of the manufacturers. The difference is always ~7%, so for a 500 GB drive, we get 465 GB of free space. If every gigabyte is important to you, always choose with a large volume.
The hard drive consists of aluminum or glass plates coated with a ferromagnetic material. divided into tracks, tracks are divided into sectors. Servo marks are applied to the magnetic surface. Thanks to them, the hard drive head quickly finds the desired sector. In case of mechanical damage or as a result of physical wear, the disk may become unstable. This means that there are other errors on it as well.
To detect bad blocks and other malfunctions, special utilities are used. The utility can scan HDD sectors and give information to the user. The evaluation of the state of the disk is carried out on other data.
SMART technology allows you to use the built-in self-diagnostic equipment and predict the device failure time. All SMART readings can be divided into 2 groups:
- Parameters of natural disk aging (number of revolutions, head movements, on-off cycles).
- Current drive parameters (height of the head above the surface, the number of reassigned sectors and search errors, the number of search errors).
In the list of attributes issued by SMART, the following are considered decisive:
- Reallocated Sectors Count. Indicates the number of sector remapping operations. If the drive detects a read/write error, then it moves to a special remap standby section. The transfer process is called remapping. On modern disks, you cannot see the bad sector, since it is hidden in the remapped sector. Bad sectors are replaced by spare ones. If the Reallocated Sectors Count indicator turns yellow, the specialist determines that there are few spare sectors left.
- Current Pending Errors Count. It is considered to be one of the critical indicators. Takes into account sectors not read the first time and marked as unstable. The decision on them is postponed until the next reading. If the read attempt succeeds, the sector will become stable. If the error occurs again, a recovery attempt will be made. If unsuccessful, the drive will perform a remapping operation. An increase in the Current Pending Errors Count attribute indicates disk degradation.
Unstable sectors appear very often. During a sudden interruption of power supply, a faulty power supply, improper shutdown of the OS, a disk write error may occur. An attempt scan will help get some of them back on track.
If in general there are no comments on the operation of the disk and other indicators of S.M.A.R.T. is normal, then when unstable sectors appear, no action needs to be taken. A non-zero value for the Current Pending Sector Count parameter indicates problems, but does not always mean that the problem is in the disk itself.
The HDDScan program is designed to analyze the state of drives, including most external ones, analyzes the integrity of the saved data on the drives. With HDDScan you can also view S.MA.R.T. attributes. Contains hard drive temperature monitoring, allows you to check the drive for performance - the ability to save and retrieve information.
The main purpose of the program is connected inside system block computer or laptop, as well as hard drives connected using external ports.
Program features
The main features of the program:
- free use;
- there is no need to make an installation;
- check available for flash drives.
The HDDscan program is completely free and can be downloaded from the official website - http://hddscan.com. The latest version of the program today is HDDScan 4.0
Usage
Before you run the program, connect your hard drive or other storage device. If the connection was not made before launch, the drive will not be read.
The program will prompt you to select the device to be analyzed. After selecting, you need to click on the round button in the center of the window. A menu will appear, select the first item. You can click on the second item from the top - , but it is not always active, but only under certain circumstances, which are determined by the program at the stage of the preliminary check of the disk.
You can view device information before or after checking. After conducting preliminary testing, which the user, in fact, does not even know about, since it is carried out in a matter of seconds when choosing a disk for research, select the fourth menu item. The program will show information about the device, which can be verified with the information that was specified for the product by the manufacturer.
To start the analysis, click on the first menu item, which can be found again by clicking on the round button in the center of the window.
After the procedure is completed, a line will appear telling about it. Double-click on it - detailed information appears.
https://youtu.be/ZQqtow6nmDE
Scan Modes in HDDScan
There are several verification modes:
- standard check;
- random reading of certain parts of the disk;
- standard reading;
- testing that involves erasing information.
After the verification, a green, yellow or red sign will be indicated. Green indicates disk integrity, yellow indicates major problems that need to be fixed urgently in order for the device to continue working.
Results
- No installation required.
- You can check external and internal drives, hard drives and memory cards.
- Several verification modes.
- Display information about the drive.
A hard disk with important information may break during operation, due to accidental shock, or concussion. If you are prudent, then some of the files can be saved. In order not to take unnecessary risks, always make a backup and a preventive check for errors and bad sectors once every six months, after deleting junk files.
If during operation you notice that files and folders suddenly disappear, when you access a file, the computer slows down, information is copied from one disk partition to another for a long time, then you should also check.
HDD Diagnostics
A hard drive is made up of a large number of individual cells called sectors. Information is stored on each sector. Special programs are used to check sectors. During the test, the programs access each cell and measure the response time. The norm is considered to be 1 response in 3 milliseconds. If the program produces a result of 600 milliseconds or more, this result is considered critical, and the cell is incapacitated.
All modern HDDs for disk self-diagnosis. The idea of the technology is that during the boot, when the HDD is initialized motherboard, a self-monitoring test occurs. The owner of the computer can look at the data from SMART and, if there are problems, has the opportunity in advance before they are lost.
A failed disk may have a slower read/write head speed, and therefore a slower data transfer rate. This will significantly reduce its performance. The computer will be slower to load, copy data from / to disk, run programs.
To diagnose hard drives for errors, bad sectors, to obtain S.M.A.R.T. , speed testing uses special programs.
Programs for checking HDD
SeaTools is a set of proprietary utilities, distributed free of charge. Can be downloaded from the official site. The proposed utilities check the disk for errors of different brands, can be used to fix sectors.
SeaTools for Windows performs validation in the Windows interface. The utility for DOS is an iso image from which you can make a boot disk for checking. This version is preferred if the user wants to avoid problems with disk access by the OS during the scan.
Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic
Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic is a utility developed especially popular among Russian users. Just like the previous one, it is free, it has a version for Windows and ISO. Provides S.M.A.R.T. information.
CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark is capable of measuring average read and write speeds across different sections of a disk. This free, multilingual program is designed specifically for measuring speed. She works with the most popular Windows versions. In addition to HDD, it can be used for SSD and flash drives. It is presented in two versions: for installation and portable.
CrystalDiskInfo is designed to diagnose hard drives and SSDs. You can view the health status and temperature of the drive. You can view S.M.A.R.T. like so much more.
Built-in Windows Utilities
Checking with built-in Windows tools. Go to "My Computer" ("This PC" for Windows 8.1). Right click on the drive to open "Properties". Select "Tools" from the menu and click the "Check" button. Wait until the verification process is completed and the computer displays the result.
HDDScan
HDD Scan - good free program. Supports IDE/SATA/SCSI hard drives, RAID arrays, external USB/FireWire drives, SSDs, and flash cards. Allows you to check hard drives, bad sectors, get SMART data, perform various kinds of disk tests.
Victoria HDD
Victoria HDD is a popular software for diagnosing hard drives: performs a disk surface test in order to detect possible malfunctions, checks for bad sectors, marks bad blocks.
Victoria HDD is a fairly simple and powerful hard drive test program that was created to evaluate performance, test, fix minor problems, and format a drive.
It's frustrating when your computer crashes. Some part breaks down, you have to spend time and money on repairs. It is doubly unpleasant if a breakdown occurs with a hard drive, because in this case the information stored on the device may suffer.
Drive manufacturers have long developed a number of drive self-diagnosis procedures. A set of technologies designed to protect the hard drive from sudden breakdowns is called S.M.A.R.T. By periodically contacting, you can monitor the status of your computer's hard drive and schedule drive replacement in advance.
During operation, some sectors of the hard disk are unreadable. The appearance of such a sector may be due to physical damage to the hard drive and factory defects. Often there is a violation of the working conditions of the hard drive - overheating or power problems.
Modern hard drives have a margin of safety in the form of a so-called reserve area. If, while working with the disk, the problem sector detects itself, the computer, on its own, "replaces" such a sector with one of the backup ones. Physically, of course, the sector remains in place, but its logical number goes to the sector from the reserve area.
Such an operation is called sector reassignment, it will practically not affect the operation of the computer. The problematic sector will be added to the defect list. The very fact of reassignment will be taken into account by increasing the Reallocated Sector Count counter. There is also a similar Reallocated Event Count parameter, their values may differ. For example, if there was no actual remapping, and there were corrected soft-bads on the disk, then the Reallocated Event Count will increase, and the indicator of remapped sectors will remain unchanged.
The value of this counter can be viewed using any program for reading S.M.A.R.T data. The most popular programs in this sector are CrystalDiskInfo, HDDScan and Victoria. In addition, there are a number of programs supplied for their devices by hard drive manufacturers themselves.
By itself, remapping a sector on a hard drive is not a problem. , eliminate the consequences - also not necessary. This is a regular operation performed by the computer on its own, it does not require human intervention. However, the number of remapped sectors is an important indicator of how worn the disk surface is.
You should pay attention to the counter of remapped sectors when buying a hard drive from your hands. The Reallocated Sector Count of the new hard drive must be zero. As the hard drive is used, it is also worth, from time to time, accessing S.M.A.R.T data.
You should not judge the health of the disk by one parameter, the dynamics are also important. If the number of remapped sectors is constantly growing or has increased dramatically in a short period of time, this may indicate a serious defect in the disk surface and the hard disk needs to be replaced.
Portable hard drives are very convenient storage media. This is a regular hard drive inside a beautiful box that connects to a computer via USB. They are larger than flash drives, so they are actively used to store and transfer large amounts of information.
All manufacturers of hard drives produce their own models. By themselves, hard drives are reliable storage media. But portable models are simply more often connected and disconnected from the computer. Therefore, specific to portable USB devices are added to the standard malfunctions.
External drive not detected
When a client contacts us and says that he is, the first piece of advice is to try another wire. The reasons are different, maybe the wire itself is faulty or too long, and then there is not enough power hard drive. In any case, this is a simple action, so the first thing to do is try a different wire.
The next step is to try connecting the drive to another computer. There may be a problem with your USB ports or drivers on your computer. If - great. And if neither replacing the wire nor checking on another computer helped, then we recommend pulling the hard drive out of the box and connecting it directly to the computer.
Inside a beautiful box, as a rule, there is a regular SATA disk. And a separate adapter board from SATA to USB. Since external drives are often connected and disconnected, these boards sometimes fail. Even if, this may not be a physical malfunction, but a problem in the controller on the adapter board, which supplies the wrong voltage to the disk. This has already happened in our practice. Therefore, we take the disk out of the box and connect the disk directly via the SATA interface to check the operation of the disk.
Genuine Western Digital USB Drives
Owners may be surprised to see a Samsung hard drive inside the case. And owners of WD Elements or WD My Passport Ultra may be even more surprised when they pull the drive out of the box and find a USB drive inside.
If you opened the box and inside is a WD10JMVW or WD5000BMVW, congratulations, you have a real USB drive. In modern external WD models, the USB connector is soldered directly to the external electronics board and there is no adapter from SATA to USB familiar to other manufacturers. But to recover data, you must first adapt the USB connector to SATA.
| Model WD | Volume, GB | box model | Number of plates | Number of heads | Family |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| wd2500bmvu | 250 | No | 2 | 3 | Venus |
| wd3200bmvu | 320 | No | 2 | 4 | Venus |
| wd5000bmvu | 500 | No | 2 | 4 | Dolphin |
| wd5000bmvv | 500 | wdbabv5000abk-00 | 2 | 4 | Zephyr |
| wd5000bmvw | 500 | wdbadb5000abk-u1 | 2 | 3 | FBLite/Firebird/Zephyr |
| wd10jmvw | 1000 | wdbuzg0010bbk-004 | 2 | 4 | FBLite/Firebird |
| wd5000kmvv | 500 | No | 3 | 4 | Shasta 3D |
| wd6400kmvv | 640 | No | 3 | 5 | Shasta 3D |
| wd5000kmvw | 500 | wdbpck5000abk-01 | 3 | 5 | Helios |
| wd7500kmvw | 750 | wdbpck7500adbk-01 | 3 | 5 | Helios |
| wd5000lmvw | 500 | No | 1 | 2 | Hubble LT / Hubble |
| wd15nmvw | 1500 | No | 4 | 7 | Shrek LT / Shrek |
| wd20nmvw | 2000 | wdbnfv0020bbl-u5 | 4 | 8 | Shrek LT / Shrek |
| wd30nmvw | 3000 | wdbnfv0030bwt-u5 | 5 | 10 | Pebbleb |
| wd10tmvv | 1000 | No | 3 | 6 | Helios / Shasta 3D |
| wd10tmvw | 1000 | wdbgys0010bbk-u0 | 3 | 6 | Helios / Shasta 3D |
| wd3200bmvv | 320 | No | 1 | 2 | Jamaica 4K |
| wd3200bmvw | 320 | No | 2 | 2 | Zephyr |
| wd7500kmvv | 750 | No | 3 | 6 | Shasta 3D |
If you found your drive in this table, then you have a drive with a USB connector right on the board. And if your wd5000bmvw is not detected or wd10jmvw is not initialized, then for diagnostics you first need to connect the drive via SATA.
The user-friendly USB interface is completely unsuitable for data recovery work. It does not allow sending ATA commands to the disk and working with hardware-failed hard disks in special technological modes.
In data recovery companies, in order to convert wd10tmvw, wd20nmvw or any disk from the table to a regular standard SATA connector, solder the wires directly onto the board. We also did this before, but now we use a more reliable method with replacing the board with the controller and the entire ROM.
One of our advantages as the largest data recovery center in Russia is our own stock of spare parts for all models of WD drives. And the second advantage, especially if your drive is new and under warranty, that we are in the field of data recovery. All WD drives that are opened in our lab do not void the warranty.
Examples from our USB drive recovery practice
Suddenly, the disk is no longer detected in the operating system Windows system 10. As the connected device is seen, even the model appears in the manager, but the OS freezes. After installing a suitable board with a SATA interface, it turned out that one of the two heads of the disk was faulty.
The WD5000BMVV drive is not detected, sometimes beeps. When the disk is turned on, the spindle spins up and recalibrates, while the indicator is constantly on. Periodically clicks once, stops and re-spins the engine, then recalibrates again.
We, users of a personal computer, often come across the abbreviation HDD. And the desire to find out what an HDD is, where it is and what it is for is justified.
HDD stands for "hard disk drive". Simply put, it's a hard drive. Gradually fading into the past, they are being replaced by SSDs, but they will occupy their niche in the HDD market for a long time to come.
Why is the drive "hard"
HDD in the computer as soon as they are not called. Hard drive, hard drive, hard drive, screw - just a small list of his names. Why all the same "hard disk drive"?
Unlike "floppy" disks (floppies), HDD data is written to hard platters, which, in turn, are covered with a layer of ferromagnetic material. They are called nothing more than "magnetic disks". A hard drive uses one or more platters on the same axis. Readers (heads) do not touch the surface of the plates during operation. This is explained simply: with the rapid rotation of the plates, a layer of oncoming air flow is formed. The distance between the reader and the work surface is very small - only a few nanometers, and the air layer, which excludes mechanical contact, ensures a long service life. If the plates do not rotate at the proper speed, then the heads are in the so-called "parking" zone - outside the boundaries of the plates.
A distinctive feature of the HDD in a computer is that the storage medium is combined with the drive, as well as with the necessary electronics unit in one housing.
HDD Main Features
Like any technical device, a hard drive has a number of characteristics, based on which, we can draw conclusions about its relevance.
- Capacity is one of the most significant quantities. Specifies the amount of data that the drive can store.
- Dimensions (form factor). The most common variations are 3.5 and 2.5 inches. Specifies the width of the device.
- The speed of rotation of the axis, spindle. The number of revolutions per minute. The parameter significantly affects the speed of access to data and directly on the speed of their transfer. The most common options: 4200, 5400, 7200, 10,000 rpm.
- The number of I/O operations per second. For modern disks, this number approaches 50 (with random access to data), with sequential access, respectively, higher - about 100.
- Power consumption is an important parameter for portable devices (we are talking about laptops / netbooks).
- Buffer size. Buffer - intermediate memory. Its purpose is to smooth out read/write speed differences. In modern HDDs, it is usually located in the range from 8 to 64 megabytes.
I hope we were able to figure out what an HDD is in a computer, and even expand our horizons a little in the world of computer hardware.
Deciphering the markings of internal WD hard drives:
(1)WD (2)000 (3)0 (4)A (5)B (6)C (7)D
1 . Western Digital.
2 . One or three digits are used to determine the volume of the disk. The volume is measured in the quantities specified in paragraph 4.
3 . 0 - serves to highlight some features. For example, the WD5001ABYS disk differs from the WD5000ABYS only in that the former has a perpendicular recording method versus the parallel one of the latter.
4 . A letter describing the value in which the volume specified in paragraph 2 is measured, and the form factor of the disk:
- A - gigabyte / 3.5",
- B - gigabyte/3.5" or gigabyte/2.5",
- C - 3.5",
- E - terabyte / 3.5",
- F - 10 GB/3.5",
- G/H - gigabyte/3.5",
5 . A letter describing the market segment for which the disc is intended and the family to which it belongs:
- A - Desktop / Caviar;
- B - Enterprise / RE2 (3-plate) / RE2-GP;
- D - Enterprise / Raptor;
- E, P - Mobile/Scorpio Blue
- G - Enthusiast/Raptor X;
- J-Mobile/Scorpio Black
- L - Enterprise/VelociRaptor;
- V - Audio-Video (Audio and Video Equipment);
- Y - Enterprise / RE2 (4-plate) / RE2-GP / RE3 / RE4.
6 . A letter describing the turnover and size of the cache:
- B - 7200 rpm and 2 MB cache;
- C - Caviar Green and 16 MB cache;
- D - Caviar Green and 32 MB cache;
- F - 10000 rpm and 16 MB cache;
- G - 10000 rpm and 8 MB cache;
- H - 10000 rpm and 32 MB cache;
- J - 7200 rpm and 8 MB cache;
- K - 7200 rpm and 16 MB cache;
- L - 7200 rpm and 32 MB cache;
- P - RE2-GP and 16 MB cache;
- Y - RE2/RE3 and 16 MB cache or RE4 and 64 MB cache;
- R - Caviar Green, 64 MB cache and advanced format;
- S/E - 7200 rpm and 64 MB cache. V - 5400 rpm and 8 MB
7 . A letter describing the hard disk interface:
- B - PATA-100;
- E - PATA-133;
- D - SATA-150;
- S - SATA-300;
- X - SATA-600.
old markings
The above is a relatively new way of marking. Previously, a template was used in which p.p. 4-5 were missing; two or three digits were assigned to the size of the disk (the volume was measured in gigabytes); the digit following them was reserved for all families; in paragraph 6, the letter L was also used (7200 rpm / 2 MB), and the letter P had a different meaning - 7200 rpm / 8 MB; in clause 7, the letter R (SATA-150) was also used.
For example: WD800JB: 80 GB, 8 MB buffer, 7200 rpm, IDE, and WD800JD: 80 GB, 8 MB buffer, 7200 rpm, SATA; WD5000AAKS: 500 GB, 3.5", Caviar family, 16 MB, 7200 rpm, SATA2; WD5000BEVT: 500 GB, 2.5", 8 MB, 5400 rpm, SATA2.
Note:
- WD10EADS-00P8B0 and WD15EADS-00P8B0 drives can have strong visible stutters at random times during write / read processes, which are difficult to diagnose / catch when applying for warranty.
- WDxxEARS drives have an Advanced Format that adds a special touch to their operation.
FAQ
1. I heard that WD hard drives have a ramp. What is it for?
Indeed, some WD drives have a ramp. There is a block of heads on it when the pancakes spin up, stop, or when the drive is turned off. This contributes to an increase in the shock resistance of the drive in a non-operating state, and in the long term, the reliability of operation increases due to the reduction of contact and wear of the plates and heads.
2. In which mode are SATA-300 drives supplied?
Hard drives marked “S” (SATA-300) are sold in SATA-300 mode with Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) disabled.
3. What are jumpers used for?
Contact closure 1-2 leads to the activation of the Spread Spectrum Clocking function.
Closing contacts 3-4 will enable Power Management mode (PM2 enable mode: in order to enable power supply in standby mode, place a jumper on pins 3-4. This mode will provide controlled spin-up using the spin-up command in accordance with the ATA standard and is mainly intended for server operation /workstations running in multi-disk configurations.
Important! PM2 mode requires a compatible BIOS that supports this feature. If PM2 is enabled and is not supported by the BIOS, the hard drive does not spin up and is therefore not detected by the system.
Note: The PM2 feature does not work with all WD SATA drives.)
Closing contacts 5-6 will enable SATA150 transfer mode.
Contact closure 7-8 will cause partitions to shift by one sector in disks with Advanced Format.
4. Some WD drives have two power connectors: SATA and Molex. Which one should you connect to?
You can connect power to any, but not to both at the same time.
5. All hard drives that I have seen have a board with electronics on the bottom. I bought WD, so this board is empty for him! This is fine?
For WD hard drives, the electronics board is turned upside down. Such a technique, according to WD, allows you to solve two problems at once - to protect the microcircuits from external influences and to ensure their cooling. Since the microcircuits are under a layer of textolite, they cannot be accidentally damaged by a sharp object when unpacking and installing the hard drive into the case. They are also protected from static electricity. Between the printed circuit board and the case there is a layer of thermally conductive material, thanks to which microcircuits can give off heat to the metal.
6. Why are acceleration sensors installed on WD electronics boards?
The boards have one or two acceleration sensors that are used to detect drive vibration during operation and allow the controller to compensate for actuator movement/acceleration caused by these vibrations. They allow you to quickly and accurately hit the desired track even in conditions of high vibration (RAFF technology - p. 17d).
7. What warranty does WD give for its desktop hard drives?
3 years on the Caviar Green/Blue series and 5 years on the Caviar Black, RE and Raptor series.
8. What are the differences between the Caviar Green, Caviar Blue, Caviar Black series?
Green - slow, quiet, cold, low disk consumption. Spindle speed - in the range of 5000-5600 rpm (i.e. the speed is fixed, but different models may be different). Great for data storage. Parking in idle (have a ramp). The parking function can interfere with the user, then it needs to be disabled using the wdidle utility.
Blue - ordinary general-purpose disks. Spindle speed - 7200 rpm.
Black - positioned as high-performance drives. Differences from Blue: they have a dual-core processor (marketing says “two processors”); may have more cache than Blue-"classmate"; air spoiler plates dissecting air flows; double spindle mounting (bottom on the platform with a motor and on top of the cover); double actuator on some models; 5 years warranty.
9. What is the difference between Raptor series discs and Caviar Blue/Black discs?
The main difference is the rotation speed of the Raptor 10,000 rpm versus 7200 for the Caviar. As a consequence of this, Raptor access time is significantly less. Raptor wheels are guaranteed for 5 years.
The Raptor X is a regular Raptor that has a large transparent lens on the top cover through which you can watch it work.
VelociRaptor drives also feature 2.5" platters and a 2.5" format, further reducing access times.
Some VelociRaptor models (WD3000GLFS and WD3000HLFS) can be installed in both 2.5" and 3.5" bays. For this, a 3.5" metal radiator supplied with the disk is used, which, together with the drive fixed in it, is screwed with standard screws in the 3.5" bay.
10. What is the difference between Caviar RE series and Caviar Green/Blue/Black?
RE stands for "RAID Edition". RE series drives have increased MTBF, different firmware, support TLER technology (see p.17c). The manufacturer is positioned for professional applications, for example, in storage systems or servers / workstations when working in RAID arrays. They have a 5 year warranty.
Have two processors; vibration compensation system; head flight adjustment system; TLER system; ramp.
RE-GP series are Green series discs with RE series features.
11. What is the difference between WD5000AAKS and WD5000KS drives?
Their main difference (and this applies to all models, the markings of which are distinguished only by the presence of “AA” in one and the absence of another) is that a disc with “AA” has a significantly higher recording density than a disc without it. Such drives have fewer platters, which means they are faster, consume slightly less power and have a slightly lower temperature (for example, the WD5000KS contains four pancakes, and the WD5000AAKS has three). Naturally, discs with "AA" are newer.
12. Should I buy a RE hard drive for my home system?
I note that, in my opinion, the above features of this series at home practically do not give any advantages. Now consider the strategy of behavior of different disks in different systems.
Ordinary desktop drives are designed to work independently, and when connected to a RAID controller, they are not even aware of its presence. If errors occur during the operation of the drive, its firmware tries to correct them on its own using the built-in error correction system. If the repair process takes more than 8 seconds (although there is no standard for controller timeout, these 8 seconds are typical for most RAID controllers), then the RAID controller will consider the drive to be faulty and turn it off from the array, which can lead to unpleasant consequences.
For a WD hard drive using TLER technology (p.18c), the situation is different. If an error occurs, the drive tries to fix it on its own for 7 seconds, and then transfers information about the error to the RAID controller, which decides whether to fix it now or leave it for later.
However, if the opposite situation occurs (a hard drive with TLER works outside of RAID), the drive “thinks” that it is connected to a RAID controller, and if it is impossible to correct the error by its own means, it admits its powerlessness and offers the controller to deal with the problem. And he is not...
Therefore, Western Digital itself does not recommend installing a WD hard drive with TLER in a system where RAID is not planned.
13. What is the maximum temperature of WD hard drives?
For modern WD hard drives, the maximum allowable temperature is 60 degrees on the surface of the can. However, this does not mean that the drive will be able to work for a long time with such heating.
14. All programs show that my WD hard drive has a temperature of 70 degrees. What to do?
According to Western Digital technical support data, HDDs produced from October 25, 2005 to mid-April 2006 had problems with temperature sensor calibration, and therefore it shows a temperature higher than the real one by 20 degrees or more. The problem is treated by changing the firmware.
15. Does WD have perpendicular recording discs?
This recording method is used in the WD7500AAKS and all newer models in all series.
16. Is it true that for Caviar Green hard drives the spindle speed varies from 5400 to 7200 rpm depending on the load?
No, this is just a marketing ploy by the manufacturer. In fact, the situation is as follows: for the Caviar Green WD family, the possibility of different spindle speeds on different models is declared, but on each particular drive this speed is CONSTANT, which is confirmed by a quote from the IntelliPower technology description: “For each GreenPower drive model, WD may use a different , invariable RPM" (http://www.westerndigital.com/en/library/sata/28).
Because WD does not disclose what the true speed of the released models is, hiding behind the meaningless IntelliPower label, you have to rely on test results. So, according to various tests, the assumption is confirmed that all Caviar Green hard drives now have 5400 (much more often) and 5000 (less often) rpm (for example, http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr?page=0 %2C2 , http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page2.html). Thus, the current "green" WD drives have a speed of 5400 or 5000 rpm, which DOES NOT change during operation.
17. Where are the temperature sensors located on WD drives?
Inside the jar in the area marked with a red circle. It is the temperature of this sensor that is displayed in S.M.A.R.T.
18. What proprietary technologies does WD have?
a) SecureConnect - a more reliable connection of SATA connectors (requires a special cable from WD);
b) FlexPower - the presence of both SATA and molex power connectors;
c) TLER (RAID-specific Time-Limited Error Recovery) - allows you to reduce the time required to recover read errors, reduces the percentage of RAID failure (see item 13);
d) RAFF (Rotary Accelerator Fead Forward) - Optimizes drive performance in vibration environments such as rackmount servers and NAS.
e) SoftSeek - reduces actuator noise during positioning, optimizing the shape of the control signal applied to the actuator when moving them over long distances;
f) IntelliPark - parking heads in idle mode (used in Caviar Green);
g) IntelliSeek - bringing the block of heads to the desired sector just in time for the moment it arrives under the head, instead of frantically flying to the track and then waiting for the desired sector.
19. How to use the wdidle program to change the parking parameters of hard drives when idle?
wdidle needs to be copied to a bootable DOS CD/DVD/flash drive, set the SATA controller to IDE mode, disconnect other drives just in case, boot from bootable media. Then run the program with the appropriate parameters:
/S - sets a timer for the time after which the disk parks its heads if there are no accesses to it, in hundreds of milliseconds (the parameter can be from 1 to 255). By default, it is 80, i.e. 80*100ms=8000ms=8s;
/D - prohibits parking;
/ R - displays the current value of the timer;
/? — prints the utility help.
20. What is technologyadvanced format?
This is the technology used in the production of some series of new terabyte HDDs. Its essence lies in the fact that the disk surface is divided into sectors of a non-standard size - 4 KB versus 512 bytes of ordinary ones. This is good for working with large files and vice versa is negative when working with small files. Thus, it is better to use such HDDs only for creating file storages, but not for active work with the disk, otherwise it threatens to reduce performance.
In addition, for the operation of such disks with Windows XP, they can only be formatted with a special WD Align utility, otherwise, again, a catastrophic decrease in performance will be noticeable.
21. How can I find out the number of platters and heads in different WD hard drives? There is nothing in the specifications.
WD is often accused of not providing information about the number of heads and platters in specific drives to the end user. Therefore, you have to extract this information from the reviews. Here's what we found out:
A) drives up to 160 GB:
- WD400Bx - 1 plate / 1 head;
- WD800xx - ½;
- WD1200xx - 2/3;
- WD1200AAxx - ½;
- WD1600xx - 2/4;
- WD1600AAxS (B) - ½;
b) disks with a capacity of 250-400 GB:
- WD2500xx - 3/6;
- WD2500AAxS (B) - 2/4, with "B3A", "B4A", "VSA" or "VTA" in the model number (MDL) - ½;
- WD2500AAKX - ?/?;
- WD2502ABYS - ½;
- WD2503ABYX - 1/1;
- WD3000xx - 3/6;
- WD3200xx - 3/6;
- WD3200AAxS (B) - 2/4, with "B3A" or "B4A" - ½;
- WD3200AAKX - ?/?;
- WD3200AALX - ?/?;
- WD3202ABYS - ½;
- WD4000xx - 4/8;
- WD4000AAxS (B) - 3/5;
V) 500 GB disks:
- WD5000KS - 4/8;
- WD5000AAxS (B) - 3/6, with "A7B", "A8B" or "L9A" - 2/4, with "M9A" or "V1A" - ½;
- WD5000AAKX - ?/?;
- WD5000AALX - ?/?;
- WD5001AALS - 2/4;
- WD5002AALX - ?/?;
- WD5000AACS - 2/4 and 2/3;
- WD5000AADS - ½;
- WD5000ABPS - 2/4;
- WD5000YS - 4/8;
- WD5000ABYS - 3/6;
- WD5002ABYS - 2/4;
- WD5003ABYX - ½;
G) disks with a capacity of 600-800 GB:
- WD6000HLHX - 3/?;
- WD6400AAKS - 2/4, with "H2B" - 2/3;
- WD6401AALS - 2/4;
- WD6400AALX - ?/?;
- WD6402AAEX - 2/3;
- WD6400AACS - 2/4;
- WD6400AADS - 2/3;
- WD6400AARS - 2/3;
- WD7500AAKS - 4/8;
- WD7501AALS - 3/5;
- WD7500AALX - ?/?;
- WD7502AAEX - ?/?;
- WD7500AACS - 3/6, with "DB6" - 3/5;
- WD7500AADS - 2/3;
- WD7500AYPS - 3/6;
- WD7502ABYS - 3/5;
- WD8000AARS - 2/3;
e) disks with a volume of 1-1.5 TB:
- WD1001FALS - 3/6, with "E3A" or "U9B" - 2/4;
- WD1002FAEX - 2/4;
- WD10EALS - 2/4;
- WD10EALX-?/?;
- WD10EACS - 4/8, with "D6B" - 3/6;
- WD10EADS - 3/6, with "M2B" - 2/4, with "P8B" - 2/4, 5000 rpm;
- WD10EARS - 2/4, with "Z5B" - 5000 rpm;
- WD1000FYPS - 4/8;
- WD1002FBYS - 3/6;
- WD1003FBYX - 2/4;
- WD15EADS - 3/6 and 4/7;
- WD15EARS - 3/6;
- WD1501FASS -3/6;
- WD1502FAEX - ?/?;
- WD1502FYPS - 3/6;
- WD1503FYYS - 3/6;
e) drives 2 TB and above:
- WD20EADS - 4/8;
- WD20EARS - 4/8, with "MVWB" - 3/6;
- WD2002FYPS - 4/8;
- WD2001FASS - 4/8;
- WD2002FAEX - ?/?;
- WD2003FYYS - 4/8;
- WD25EZRS - ?/?;
- WD30EZRS - 4/8.
Greetings to all blog readers. Many people are interested in the question - how does a computer hard drive work. Therefore, I decided to dedicate today's article to this.
A computer hard disk (HDD or hard drive) is needed to store information after the computer is turned off, unlike RAM () - which stores information until the power is turned off (until the computer is turned off).
The hard drive, by right, can be called a real work of art, only engineering. Yes Yes exactly. It's so complicated inside everything is arranged. At the moment, the hard drive is the most popular device for storing information all over the world, it is on a par with devices such as: flash memory (flash drives), SSD. Many people have heard about the complexity of the hard disk device and wonder how so much information is placed in it, and therefore would like to know how a computer hard disk is arranged or what it consists of. Today there will be such an opportunity).
A hard drive is made up of five main parts. And the first of them - integrated circuit, which synchronizes the work of the disk with the computer and manages all processes.
The second part is the electric motor(spindle), causes the disk to rotate at a speed of approximately 7200 rpm, and the integrated circuit keeps the rotation speed constant.
And now the third one the most important part is the rocker, which can both write and read information. The end of the rocker is usually divided so that you can work with several discs at once. However, the rocker head never comes into contact with the discs. There is a gap between the surface of the disk and the head, the size of this gap is about five thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair!
But let's still see what happens if the gap disappears and the rocker head comes into contact with the surface of the rotating disk. We still remember from school that F = m * a (Newton's second law, in my opinion), from which it follows that an object with a small mass and huge acceleration becomes incredibly heavy. Given the huge speed of rotation of the disk itself, the weight of the rocker head becomes very, very noticeable. Naturally, disk damage is inevitable in this case. By the way, this is what happened to the disk, in which this gap disappeared for some reason:
The role of the friction force is also important, i.e. its almost complete absence, when the rocker begins to read information, while shifting up to 60 times per second. But wait, where is the engine here that drives the rocker, and even at such a speed? In fact, it is not visible, because it is an electromagnetic system that works on the interaction of 2 forces of nature: electricity and magnetism. Such interaction allows accelerating the rocker to the speed of light, in the literal sense.
Fourth part- the hard drive itself, this is where information is written and read from, by the way, there may be several of them.
Well, the fifth, final part of the hard drive design is, of course, the case in which all other components are installed. The materials used are as follows: almost the entire body is made of plastic, but the top cover is always metal. The assembled housing is often referred to as a "containment zone". There is an opinion that there is no air inside the containment area, or rather, that there is a vacuum there. This opinion is based on the fact that at such high disk rotation speeds, even a speck of dust that gets inside can do a lot of bad things. And this is almost true, except that there is no vacuum there - but there is purified, dried air or neutral gas - nitrogen, for example. Although, perhaps in earlier versions of hard drives, instead of cleaning the air, it was simply pumped out.
We talked about components, i.e. what is a hard drive made of. Now let's talk about data storage.
How and in what form is data stored on a computer hard drive
Data is stored in narrow tracks on the disk surface. During production, more than 200,000 such tracks are applied to the disc. Each of the tracks is divided into sectors.
Track and sector maps allow you to determine where to write or where to read information. Again, all information about sectors and tracks is located in the memory of an integrated circuit, which, unlike other components of a hard drive, is not located inside the case, but outside and usually from below.
The surface of the disc itself is smooth and shiny, but this is only at first glance. On closer examination, the surface structure turns out to be more complex. The fact is that the disk is made of a metal alloy coated with a ferromagnetic layer. This layer does all the work. The ferromagnetic layer remembers all the information, how? Very simple. The rocker head magnetizes a microscopic area on the film (ferromagnetic layer), setting the magnetic moment of such a cell to one of the states: o or 1. Each such zero and one are called bits. Thus, any information recorded on a hard disk is, in fact, a certain sequence and a certain number of zeros and ones. For example, a good quality photo occupies about 29 million of these cells, and is scattered across 12 different sectors. Yes, it sounds impressive, but in reality - such a huge number of bits takes up a very small area on the surface of the disk. Each square centimeter of hard disk surface contains several tens of billions of bits.
How a hard drive works
We have just examined the hard drive device, each of its components separately. Now I propose to link everything into a certain system, thanks to which the very principle of the hard disk operation will be clear.
So, how a hard drive works next: when the hard drive is put into operation, it means either it is being written to, or information is being read from it, or from it, the electric motor (spindle) starts to gain momentum, and since the hard drives are fixed on the spindle itself, respectively, they are together with it also start to rotate. And until the speed of the disk(s) has reached the level that an air cushion is formed between the rocker head and the disk, the rocker is in a special "parking zone" to avoid damage. Here's what it looks like.
As soon as the speed reaches the desired level, the servo drive (electromagnetic motor) sets in motion the rocker, which is already positioned in the place where you want to write or read information. This is just facilitated by an integrated circuit that controls all movements of the rocker.
There is a widespread opinion, a kind of myth, that at times when the disk is "idle", i.e. no read / write operations are performed with it temporarily, the hard drives inside stop spinning. This is really a myth, because in fact, hard drives inside the case are constantly spinning, even when the hard drive is in power-saving mode and nothing is being written to it.
Well, here we have examined with you the device of the computer hard disk in all details. Of course, within the framework of one article, it is impossible to tell about everything related to hard drives. For example, in this article it was not said about - this is a big topic, I decided to write a separate article about it.
I found an interesting video about how a hard drive works in different modes
Thank you all for your attention, if you have not yet subscribed to updates of this site - I highly recommend doing this so as not to miss interesting and useful materials. See you on the blog pages!
A modern hard drive is a unique component of a computer. It is unique in that it stores service information, by studying which, you can evaluate the "health" of the disk. This information contains the history of changes in many parameters monitored by the hard drive during operation. No other component of the system unit provides the owner with statistics of its work! Together with the fact that the HDD is one of the most unreliable computer components, such statistics can be very useful and help its owner avoid hassle and loss of money and time.
Information about the state of the disk is available thanks to a set of technologies called by the common name S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analisys and Reporting Technology, i.e. technology of self-monitoring, analysis and reporting). This complex is quite extensive, but we will talk about those aspects of it that allow you to look at the S.M.A.R.T. attributes displayed in any hard drive testing program and understand what is happening with the disk.
I note that the following applies to drives with SATA and PATA interfaces. SAS, SCSI, and other server drives also have S.M.A.R.T., but its representation is very different from SATA/PATA. Yes, and it is usually not a person who monitors server disks, but a RAID controller, so we will not talk about them.
So, if we open S.M.A.R.T. in any of the numerous programs, we will see approximately the following picture (the screenshot shows the S.M.A.R.T. of the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000. With HDS721010CLA332 in HDDScan 3.3):
Each line displays a separate S.M.A.R.T attribute. Attributes have more or less standardized names and a certain number, which do not depend on the model and manufacturer of the disk.
Each S.M.A.R.T. has multiple fields. Each field belongs to a specific class from the following: ID, Value, Worst, Threshold and RAW. Let's look at each of the classes.
- ID(may also be called number) — identifier, attribute number in S.M.A.R.T. technology. The name of the same attribute can be given by programs in different ways, but the identifier always uniquely identifies the attribute. This is especially useful in the case of programs that translate the generally accepted attribute name from English into Russian. Sometimes it turns out such rubbish that you can understand what kind of parameter it is only by its identifier.
- Value (Current)- the current value of the attribute in parrots (i.e., in values of unknown dimension). During the operation of the hard drive, it can decrease, increase and remain unchanged. By the Value indicator, one cannot judge the "health" of an attribute without comparing it with the Threshold value of the same attribute. As a rule, the smaller the Value, the worse the state of the attribute (initially, all value classes, except RAW, on the new disk have the maximum possible value, for example, 100).
- Worst- the worst value that the Value value has reached in the entire life of the hard drive. It is also measured in "parrots". In the course of work, it can decrease or remain unchanged. It also cannot be used to unequivocally judge the health of an attribute, you need to compare it with Threshold.
- Threshold- the value in "parrots" that the Value of the same attribute must reach in order for the attribute's state to be recognized as critical. Simply put, Threshold is a threshold: if Value is greater than Threshold, the attribute is fine; if less than or equal, with the problem attribute. It is by this criterion that utilities that read S.M.A.R.T. issue a report on the status of the disk or a separate attribute like “Good” or “Bad”. At the same time, they do not take into account that even with Value greater than Threshold, the disk can actually already be dying from the user’s point of view, or even walking dead, so when assessing the health of a disk, you should still look at a different attribute class, and namely RAW. However, it is the value of Value that falls below Threshold that can become a legitimate reason for replacing a disk under warranty (for the guaranteeers themselves, of course) - who can speak more clearly about the health of a disk than he himself, demonstrating the current value of the attribute is worse than the critical threshold? That is, if the value of Value is greater than Threshold, the disk itself considers that the attribute is healthy, and if it is less or equal, it is sick. Obviously, if Threshold=0, the attribute state will never be recognized as critical. Threshold is a constant parameter hardcoded by the manufacturer in the disk.
- RAW (Data)- the most interesting, important and necessary indicator for evaluation. In most cases, it does not contain "parrots", but real values expressed in various units of measurement, directly talking about the current state of the disk. Based on this indicator, the Value value is formed (but by what algorithm it is formed is already a secret of the manufacturer, covered in darkness). It is the ability to read and analyze the RAW field that makes it possible to objectively assess the state of the hard drive.
This is what we will do now - we will analyze all the most used S.M.A.R.T. attributes, see what they say and what to do if they are not in order.
| Attributes of S.M.A.R.T. | |||||||||||||||||
| 0x | |||||||||||||||||
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Before describing attributes and valid values for their RAW field, let me clarify that attributes can have a RAW field. different type: current and accumulative. The current field contains the value of the attribute at the moment, it is characterized by a periodic change (for some attributes - occasionally, for others - many times per second; another thing is that such a quick change is not displayed in S.M.A.R.T. readers). Accumulating field - contains statistics, usually it contains the number of occurrences of a particular event since the first start of the disk.
The current type is typical for attributes for which it makes no sense to summarize their previous readings. For example, the disk temperature reading is current: its purpose is to show the current temperature, not the sum of all previous temperatures. The accumulative type is characteristic of attributes for which their entire meaning is to provide information for the entire period of the "life" of the hard drive. For example, the attribute that characterizes the time of disk operation is cumulative, i.e. it contains the number of units of time worked out by the drive during its entire history.
Let's start looking at attributes and their RAW fields.
Attribute: 01 Raw Read Error Rate
All Seagate, Samsung (starting with the SpinPoint F1 family (inclusive)) and Fujitsu 2.5″ drives have huge numbers in these fields.
For other Samsung drives and all WD drives, this field is 0.
For Hitachi disks, this field is characterized by 0 or a periodic change in the field in the range from 0 to several units.
Such differences are due to the fact that all Seagate hard drives, some Samsung and Fujitsu consider the values of these parameters differently than WD, Hitachi and other Samsung. During the operation of any hard drive, errors of this kind always occur, and it overcomes them on its own, this is normal, just on disks that contain 0 or a small number in this field, the manufacturer did not consider it necessary to indicate the true number of these errors.
Thus, a non-zero parameter on WD and Samsung drives up to SpinPoint F1 (not included) and a large value of the parameter on Hitachi drives may indicate hardware problems with the drive. Be aware that utilities can display multiple values contained in the RAW field of this attribute as one, and it will look quite large, although this will not be true (see below for details).
On Seagate, Samsung (SpinPoint F1 and newer) and Fujitsu drives, this attribute can be ignored.
Attribute: 02 Throughput Performance
The parameter does not give any information to the user and does not indicate any danger in any of its values.
Attribute: 03 Spin-Up Time
The acceleration time may vary for different disks (and for disks of the same manufacturer, too) depending on the spin-up current, the mass of pancakes, the nominal speed of the spindle, etc.
By the way, Fujitsu hard drives always have one in this field if there are no problems with spinning the spindle.
It says practically nothing about the health of the disk, so when assessing the state of the hard drive, you can ignore the parameter.
Attribute: 04 Number of Spin-Up Times (Start/Stop Count)
When assessing health, ignore the attribute.
Attribute: 05 Reallocated Sector Count
Let us explain what a “reassigned sector” is in general. When a disk encounters an unreadable/poorly readable/unwritable/poorly writable sector during operation, it may consider it irreparably damaged. Especially for such cases, the manufacturer provides on each disk (on some models - in the center (logical end) of the disk, on some - at the end of each track, etc.) a reserve area. In the presence of a damaged sector, the disk marks it as unreadable and uses the sector in the spare area instead, making the appropriate marks in a special list of surface defects - G-list. Such an operation to assign a new sector to the role of the old one is called remap (remap) or reassignment, and used instead of the damaged sector - reassigned. The new sector receives the LBA logical number of the old one, and now when software accesses the sector with this number (programs don't know about any reassignments!) the request will be redirected to the reserve area.
Thus, even though the sector is out of order, the volume of the disk does not change. It is clear that it does not change for the time being, because the volume of the reserve area is not infinite. However, the spare area may well contain several thousand sectors, and it would be very irresponsible to allow it to end - the disk will need to be replaced long before that.
By the way, repairmen say that Samsung drives very often do not want to perform sector reassignment in any way.
Opinions differ on this attribute. Personally, I believe that if it reaches 10, the disk must be changed - after all, this means a progressive process of degradation of the surface state of either pancakes, or heads, or something else hardware, and there is no way to stop this process. By the way, according to people close to Hitachi, Hitachi itself considers a disk to be replaced when it already has 5 reassigned sectors. Another question is whether this information is official, and whether service centers follow this opinion. Something tells me not :)
Another thing is that service center employees may refuse to recognize the disk as faulty if the proprietary utility of the disk manufacturer writes something like “S.M.A.R.T. Status: Good” or the Value or Worst values of the attribute will be greater than Threshold (in fact, the manufacturer’s utility itself can evaluate by this criterion). And formally they will be right. But who needs a drive with constant deterioration of its hardware components, even if such deterioration is in line with the nature of the hard drive, and hard drive technology tries to minimize its consequences by allocating, for example, a spare area?
Attribute: 07 Seek Error Rate
The description of the formation of this attribute almost completely coincides with the description for attribute 01 Raw Read Error Rate, except that for Hitachi hard drives the normal value of the RAW field is only 0.
Thus, do not pay attention to the attribute on Seagate, Samsung SpinPoint F1 and newer and Fujitsu 2.5″ drives, on other Samsung models, as well as on all WD and Hitachi, a non-zero value indicates problems, for example, with a bearing, etc. .
Attribute: 08 Seek Time Performance
Does not give any information to the user and does not indicate any danger in any of its values.
Attribute: 09 Power On Hours Count (Power-on Time)
Says nothing about disk health.
Attribute: 10 (0A - Hexadecimal) Spin Retry Count
Most often, he does not talk about the health of the disk.
The main reasons for increasing the parameter are poor contact between the disk and the power supply unit or the inability of the power supply unit to supply the required current to the power supply line of the disk.
Ideally, it should be equal to 0. With an attribute value of 1-2, you can ignore it. If the value is greater, first of all, you should pay close attention to the condition of the power supply, its quality, the load on it, check the contact of the hard drive with the power cable, check the power cable itself.
Surely the disk may not start immediately due to problems with it, but this happens very rarely, and this possibility should be considered as a last resort.
Attribute: 11 (0B) Calibration Retry Count (Recalibration Retries)
A non-zero, and especially a growing value of the parameter may mean problems with the disk.
Attribute: 12 (0C) Power Cycle Count
Not related to disk state.
Attribute: 183 (B7) SATA Downshift Error Count
Doesn't say anything about the health of the drive.
Attribute: 184 (B8) End-to-End Error
A non-zero value indicates disk problems.
Attribute: 187 (BB) Reported Uncorrected Sector Count (UNC Error)
A non-zero attribute value clearly indicates that the disk is in an abnormal state (combined with a non-zero attribute value of 197) or that it was previously so (combined with a null value of 197).
Attribute: 188 (BC) Command Timeout
Such errors can occur due to the poor quality of cables, contacts, used adapters, extension cords, etc., as well as due to the incompatibility of the disk with a specific SATA / PATA controller on the motherboard (or discrete). Due to errors of this kind, BSODs are possible in Windows.
A non-zero value of the attribute indicates a potential "disease" of the disk.
Attribute: 189 (BD) High Fly Writes
In order to say why such cases occur, you need to be able to analyze the S.M.A.R.T. logs, which contain information specific to each manufacturer, which is not currently implemented in open source software - therefore, you can ignore the attribute.
Attribute: 190 (BE) Airflow Temperature
Doesn't say anything about the status of the disk.
Attribute: 191 (BF) G-Sensor Shock Count (Mechanical Shock)
Relevant for mobile hard drives. On Samsung drives, you can often ignore it, because they can have a very sensitive sensor, which, figuratively speaking, reacts almost to the movement of air from the wings of a fly flying in the same room as the drive.
In general, the operation of the sensor is not a sign of an impact. It can grow even from the positioning of the BMG with the disc itself, especially if it is not fixed. The main purpose of the sensor is to stop the recording operation during vibrations in order to avoid errors.
Doesn't talk about disk health.
Attribute: 192 (C0) Power Off Retract Count (Emergency Retry Count)
It does not allow to judge the state of the disk.
Attribute: 193 (C1) Load/Unload Cycle Count
Doesn't talk about disk health.
Attribute: 194 (C2) Temperature (HDA Temperature, HDD Temperature)
The attribute does not tell about the state of the disk, but it allows you to control one of the most important parameters. My opinion: when working, try not to allow the temperature of the hard drive to rise above 50 degrees, although the manufacturer usually declares a maximum temperature limit of 55-60 degrees.
Attribute: 195 (C3) Hardware ECC Recovered
Features inherent in this attribute on different discs fully correspond to those of attributes 01 and 07.
Attribute: 196 (С4) Reallocated Event Count
Indirectly speaks about disk health. The higher the value, the worse. However, one cannot unequivocally judge the health of a disk by this parameter without considering other attributes.
This attribute is directly related to attribute 05. With growth of 196, 05 most often grows. If attribute 05 does not grow when attribute 196 grows, it means that when trying to remap, the candidate for bad blocks turned out to be a soft bad (see details below), and the disk fixed it so that the sector was deemed healthy and no remapping was necessary.
If attribute 196 is less than attribute 05, it means that during some remapping operations several bad sectors were transferred at one time.
If attribute 196 is greater than attribute 05, it means that during some reassignment operations, later corrected soft-bads were found.
Attribute: 197 (С5) Current Pending Sector Count
If a disk stumbles upon a “bad” sector during operation (for example, the checksum of the sector does not match the data in it), the disk marks it as a candidate for remapping, enters it into a special internal list and increases parameter 197. It follows that the disk may have bad sectors, which he does not yet know about - after all, there may well be areas on the plates that the hard drive does not use for some time.
When attempting to write to a sector, the drive first checks to see if that sector is in the list of candidates. If the sector is not found there, the recording proceeds in the usual way. If it is found, this sector is tested by writing-reading. If all test operations pass normally, then the disk considers that the sector is healthy. (That is, there was a so-called “soft bad” - an erroneous sector arose not due to the fault of the disk, but for other reasons: for example, at the time of recording information, the electricity went out, and the disk interrupted the recording, parking the BMG. As a result, the data in sector will be underwritten, and the sector checksum, which depends on the data in it, will remain old at all.There will be a discrepancy between it and the data in the sector.) In this case, the disk performs the originally requested write and removes the sector from the list of candidates. In this case, the attribute 197 decreases, it is also possible to increase the attribute 196.
If the test fails, the disk performs a remapping operation, decrementing attribute 197, incrementing 196 and 05, and making marks in the G-list.
So, a non-zero value of the parameter indicates problems (however, it cannot say whether the problem is in the disk itself).
If the value is non-zero, it is necessary to start sequential reading of the entire surface in the Victoria or MHDD programs with the option remap. Then, when scanning, the disk will definitely stumble upon a bad sector and try to write to it (in the case of Victoria 3.5 and the option advanced remap- the disk will try to write the sector up to 10 times). Thus, the program will provoke a “treatment” of the sector, and as a result, the sector will either be fixed or reassigned.
In case of reading failure, both with remap, so with advanced remap, you should try to start sequential recording in the same Victoria or MHDD. Keep in mind that the write operation erases data, so be sure to make a backup before using it!
Sometimes the following manipulations can help prevent a failure to perform a remap: remove the disk electronics board and clean the contacts of the hard drive HDA connecting it to the board - they can be oxidized. Be careful when performing this procedure - because of it, you can lose your warranty!
The impossibility of remapping may be due to another reason - the disk has exhausted the reserve area, and it simply has nowhere to remap sectors.
If the value of attribute 197 is not reduced to 0 by any manipulations, you should think about replacing the disk.
Attribute: 198 (C6) Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count (Uncorrectable Sector Count)
This parameter changes only under the influence of offline testing, no program scans affect it. During self-test operations, the behavior of the attribute is the same as that of attribute 197.
A non-zero value indicates problems on the disk (just like 197, without specifying who is to blame).
Attribute: 199 (C7) UltraDMA CRC Error Count
In the vast majority of cases, errors are caused by a poor-quality data transfer cable, overclocking of the computer's PCI / PCI-E buses, or poor contact in the SATA connector on the disk or on the motherboard / controller.
Errors during transmission over the interface and, as a result, the growing value of the attribute can lead to switching operating system operating mode of the channel on which the drive is located, in PIO mode, which entails a sharp drop in read / write speed when working with it and CPU usage up to 100% (seen in the Windows Task Manager).
In the case of Hitachi hard drives of the Deskstar 7K3000 and 5K3000 series, the growing attribute may indicate incompatibility between the disk and the SATA controller. To remedy the situation, you need to forcibly switch such a drive to SATA 3 Gb / s mode.
My opinion: if there are errors, reconnect the cable from both ends; if their number grows and it is more than 10 - throw away the cable and put a new one in its place or remove the overclock.
Attribute: 200 (C8) Write Error Rate (MultiZone Error Rate)
Attribute: 202 (CA) Data Address Mark Error
Attribute: 203 (CB) Run Out Cancel
Health effects are unknown.
Attribute: 220 (DC) Disk Shift
Health effects are unknown.
Attribute: 240 (F0) Head Flying Hours
Health effects are unknown.
Attribute: 254 (FE) Free Fall Event Count
Health effects are unknown.
Let's summarize the description of the attributes. Non-zero values:
When analyzing attributes, keep in mind that some S.M.A.R.T. several values for this parameter can be stored: for example, for the penultimate run of the disk and for the last one. Such multi-byte parameters are logically composed of multiple values of fewer bytes - for example, a parameter that stores two values for the last two runs, each with 2 bytes, would be 4 bytes long. Programs that interpret S.M.A.R.T. are often unaware of this, and show this parameter as one number rather than two, which sometimes leads to confusion and excitement for the disk owner. For example, "Raw Read Error Rate", storing the penultimate value "1" and the last value "0", will look like 65536.
It should be noted that not all programs can correctly display such attributes. Many just translate an attribute with several values into the decimal number system as one huge number. It is correct to display such content - either broken down by values (then the attribute will consist of several separate numbers), or in hexadecimal number system (then the attribute will look like a single number, but its components will be easily distinguishable at a glance), or both , and another at the same time. Examples of good programs are HDDScan, CrystalDiskInfo, Hard Disk Sentinel.
Let's demonstrate the differences in practice. This is what the instantaneous value of attribute 01 looks like on one of my Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 in Victoria 4.46b, which does not take into account the feature of this attribute:
And this is how it looks in the “correct” HDDScan 3.3:
The advantages of HDDScan in this context are obvious, aren't they?
If we analyze S.M.A.R.T. on different disks, you may notice that the same attributes may behave differently. For example, some S.M.A.R.T. Hitachi hard drives are reset to zero after a certain period of disk inactivity; parameter 01 has features on Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung and Fujitsu drives, 03 on Fujitsu. It is also known that after flashing a disk, some parameters may be set to 0 (for example, 199). However, such a forced reset of the attribute will by no means indicate that the problems with the disk have been resolved (if any). After all, a growing critical attribute is consequence trouble, not cause.
When analyzing multiple datasets, S.M.A.R.T. it becomes obvious that the set of attributes for disks from different manufacturers and even for different models of the same manufacturer may differ. This is due to the so-called vendor-specific attributes (i.e. attributes used by a certain manufacturer to monitor their drives) and should not be cause for concern. If the monitoring software can read such attributes (for example, Victoria 4.46b), then on disks for which they are not intended, they can have "terrible" (huge) values, and they simply do not need to be paid attention to. This is how, for example, Victoria 4.46b displays the RAW values of attributes that are not intended for monitoring in Hitachi HDS721010CLA332:
Often there is a problem when programs cannot read S.M.A.R.T. disk. In the case of a working hard drive, this can be caused by several factors. For example, S.M.A.R.T. is not displayed very often. when connecting a drive in AHCI mode. In such cases, it is worth trying different programs, in particular HDD Scan, which has the ability to work in this mode, although it does not always succeed, or it is worth temporarily switching the disk to IDE compatibility mode, if possible. Further, on many motherboards, the controllers to which the hard drives are connected are not built into the chipset or the south bridge, but are implemented by separate microcircuits. In this case, the DOS version of Victoria, for example, will not see the hard disk connected to the controller, and it will need to force it by pressing the [P] key and entering the channel number with the disk. Often not read S.M.A.R.T. from USB drives, which is explained by the fact that the USB controller simply does not skip commands for reading S.M.A.R.T. Almost never read S.M.A.R.T. for disks operating as part of a RAID array. Here, too, it makes sense to try different programs, but in the case of hardware RAID controllers, this is useless.
If, after purchasing and installing a new hard drive, any programs (HDD Life, Hard Drive Inspector, etc.) show that: the disk has 2 hours left to live; its productivity is 27%; health - 19.155% (choose to taste) - then you should not panic. Understand the following. First, you need to look at the S.M.A.R.T. indicators, and not at the numbers of health and productivity that come from nowhere (however, the principle of their calculation is clear: the worst indicator is taken). Secondly, any program when evaluating S.M.A.R.T. looks at the deviation of the values of various attributes from previous readings. At the first launch of a new disk, the parameters are unstable, it takes some time to stabilize them. The program that evaluates S.M.A.R.T. sees that the attributes are changing, makes calculations, it turns out that if they change at such a pace, the drive will soon fail, and it starts signaling: “Save the data!” Some time will pass (up to a couple of months), the attributes will stabilize (if everything is really in order with the disk), the utility will collect data for statistics, and the timing of the death of the disk as S.M.A.R.T stabilizes. will be carried farther and farther into the future. Evaluation of Seagate and Samsung disks by programs is a separate conversation altogether. Due to the peculiarities of attributes 1, 7, 195, even for an absolutely healthy disk, programs usually give the conclusion that it is wrapped in a sheet and crawling to the cemetery.
Note that the following situation is possible: all S.M.A.R.T. - normal, but in fact the disk is with problems, although this is not noticeable for anything yet. This is explained by the fact that S.M.A.R.T. works only “after the fact”, i.e. attributes change only when the disk encounters problem areas during operation. And until he stumbled upon them, he does not know about them and, therefore, in S.M.A.R.T. he has nothing to record.
So S.M.A.R.T. is a useful technology, but it must be used wisely. Besides, even if S.M.A.R.T. your disk is perfect, and you are constantly checking the disk - do not rely on the fact that your disk will "live" for many more years. Winchesters tend to break down so quickly that S.M.A.R.T. it simply does not have time to display its changed state, and it also happens that there are obvious problems with the disk, but in S.M.A.R.T. - Everything is fine. We can say that a good S.M.A.R.T. does not guarantee that everything is fine with the drive, but bad S.M.A.R.T. guaranteed to indicate problems. At the same time, even with a bad S.M.A.R.T. Utilities may indicate that the disk is "healthy" because critical attributes have not reached thresholds. Therefore, it is very important to analyze S.M.A.R.T. himself, without relying on the "verbal" evaluation of programs.
Although S.M.A.R.T. and works, hard drives and the concept of "reliability" are so incompatible that it is customary to consider them simply consumables. Well, like ink cartridges in a printer. Therefore, in order to avoid losing valuable data, make periodic backups to another medium (for example, another hard drive). It is optimal to make two backup copies on two different media, not counting the hard drive with the original data. Yes, this leads to additional costs, but believe me: the cost of restoring information from a broken HDD will cost you many times - if not an order of magnitude or two - more. But the data is not always able to recover even professionals. That is, the only way to ensure reliable storage of your data is to backup them.
Finally, I will mention some programs that are well suited for the analysis of S.M.A.R.T. and testing hard drives: HDDScan (Windows, DOS, free), MHDD (DOS, free).
