HD SMART question

Mon May 18 11:44:08 EDT 2009

Been having some drive problems recently, and I'm trying to grok the
current situation.  Anyone who knows SMART reasonably well who can help?

Bought a new drive from NewEgg a while back, a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
ST3500320AS.  Drive started to show problems and I RMA'ed it back to
NewEgg for a new one.  I figured that was end of story.

A couple of months later, the new one starts to have issues too,
including a reallocated sector, and my machine freezing up during a
backup cron job.  I do some research and see that people have been
having some issues with early versions of those drives, but that the
issues have been largely solved now, largely due to new firmware.  So I
upgrade the drive's firmware, as I see is recommended.  But still
problems.  So I RMA this one back to Seagate for a new one.

OK, so I receive a new one the other day, and install it today.  I
create an ext3 partition, and - just to make sure - decide to check out
the drive's status in smartctl before I start dumping data onto it.
(I'm planning to use it for a backup drive.)  And lo and behold, it
looks like the drive is showing a load of smart errors in the "raw read
error rate" and the "seek error rate" - and that they're increasing!
(See details below, if interested).   And this is a brand new drive (I
haven't even ever mounted it yet!)  By contrast, a fairly new Western
Digital drive shows zeroes in those catagories.  (Again, below for details.)

Nevertheless, I'm puzzled as to whether the drive is actually bad or
not.  I've been doing some reading online which says that it's not
necessarily abnormal to have non-zero values for those attributes.  But
even so, it still seems strange that they should be increasing so quickly.

Bottom line:  can I trust this new drive with my backup data, or is this
new one a lemon too, and I should just dump it and get another one of
the Western Digitals?

TIA,

DR

---

Example SMART output, taken about 10 minutes apart, while a long
self-test is in progress:

[darose at darsys9 ~]$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdc
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8
Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
   1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   100   100   006    Pre-fail
Always       -       66806
   3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   098   098   000    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
   4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age
Always       -       3
   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
   7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   100   253   030    Pre-fail
Always       -       23337
   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       3
  10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
  12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age
Always       -       3
184 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always
       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
188 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   059   058   045    Old_age   Always
       -       41 (Lifetime Min/Max 23/42)
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   041   042   000    Old_age   Always
       -       41 (0 23 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       66806
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age
Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0

[darose at darsys9 ~]$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdc
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8
Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
   1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   100   100   006    Pre-fail
Always       -       74278
   3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   098   098   000    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
   4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age
Always       -       3
   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
   7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   100   253   030    Pre-fail
Always       -       23347
   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       3
  10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
  12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age
Always       -       3
184 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always
       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
188 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   059   058   045    Old_age   Always
       -       41 (Lifetime Min/Max 23/42)
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   041   042   000    Old_age   Always
       -       41 (0 23 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       74278
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age
Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0

Same output from a Western Digital drive:

[darose at darsys9 ~]$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdd
Password:
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8
Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
   1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
   3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   169   157   021    Pre-fail
Always       -       4533
   4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       14
   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
   7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   100   253   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age
Always       -       1420
  10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
  11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
  12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       13
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always
       -       8
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always
       -       14
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   104   098   000    Old_age   Always
       -       43
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age
Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always
       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age
Offline      -       0