How to read and what to look for in S.M.A.R.T. reports ?

[serpro69]

Wanted to ask if someone can help me understand how to read these reports.

It says "good health" on all of them, but still would like to understand if there are any potential issues with these drives, and what to look for in these reports overall.

 

Spoiler

 

Particularly, 'read error rate', 'spin up time', 'seek error rate' . Do they look OK? 

Some say to only look at '* Sector Count' items (05, C5, C6 ? ), others mention the above three as "critical" attributes as well.

I'm confused whom to believe  and whether any of these reports should raise some red flags for me.

[Etern4l]

2 hours ago, serpro69 said:

Wanted to ask if someone can help me understand how to read these reports.

It says "good health" on all of them, but still would like to understand if there are any potential issues with these drives, and what to look for in these reports overall.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Particularly, 'read error rate', 'spin up time', 'seek error rate' . Do they look OK? 

Some say to only look at '* Sector Count' items (05, C5, C6 ? ), others mention the above three as "critical" attributes as well.

I'm confused whom to believe  and whether any of these reports should raise some red flags for me.

 

Common sense would dictate that if error rate > 0 then replace the drive immediately.

[serpro69]

6 hours ago, Etern4l said:

Common sense would dictate that if error rate > 0 then replace the drive immediately.

 

That would be my thought as well. But I've read a number of posts where people say "ignore them unless something else critical shows abnormal", especially on Seagate drives.

 

The reason I'm asking is I'm considering buying some used drives to use for backups, but these error counts are kind of making we wary.

 

 

EDIT: here are some interesting reads for anyone interested in this topic:

- https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-smart-stats/

- https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-smart-stats-indicate-hard-drive-failures/

- https://www.backblaze.com/blog-smart-stats-2014-8.html#S1N

 

 

EDIT 2: here several members of /r/datahoarder suggest that read/seek error counts don't mean much generally: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/61pmsb/just_got_a_seagate_ironwolf_are_these_smart/

Edited November 16, 2022 by serpro69
add some blog posts, links