Re: Disk performance deteriated to unbearable levels

[Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com>]

On 11/9/2011 1:34 AM, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Miles Fidelman wrote:
>> try smartctl -A /dev/sda
>>
>> that will give you a much longer list of statistics collected by the drive
>>
>> the one I always look at first is the absolute value of "raw read
>> errors" - if that's higher than 0, the drive is starting to fail,
>> and its internal code is spending more and more time trying to read
>> and re-read data off the media
> 
> Excellent information!

Not really.  The numbers are not absolutes.  And they differ among
manufacturers.  S.M.A.R.T. is a data format standard for "drive health",
but it does not dictate "value" standards for the field contents.

For the end user, attempting to interpret some S.M.A.R.T. data for some
makes of drives is hit or miss.  I would say as a general rule that one
should contact the drive manufacturer if s/he sees S.M.A.R.T. error
counts rise.  The drive may or may not be failing.

-- 
Stan