9

SMART Data & Self-Tests Overall Assessment reports for both disks Disk is OK. What does this mean? According to the following two screenshots is my hard disk doomed?

enter image description here

enter image description here

Fabby
  • 34,259
anchicka
  • 91
  • 4
  • 3
    Close voters, why is this off-topic and what is unclear? – A.B. Jul 15 '15 at 14:15
  • 1
    @A.B.: Likely because the question is more about hard drives than it is about Ubuntu itself. I think the unclear votes are more from before Karel edited it. – Kaz Wolfe Jul 15 '15 at 14:30
  • 3
    @A.B. --- probably because it's unclear where the problem is --- I can't really understand why the OP thinks the disk is doomed. For the 16 bad sectors? Because it is emitting smoke :-)? See --- not clear at all. – Rmano Jul 15 '15 at 16:11
  • I read it a little differently from everyone else here. 16 reallocated sectors per se are not a problem, as, in fact, they make up a little number and they've been reallocated already. However your drive is old (2,5+ years only of power-on hours! It's likely that you own it from much more), and it's likely that the cause of this it's the unavoidable wear-off of the platters, which, when it starts, it usually get worse exponentially. I'd keep an eye on the reallocated sectors number for a while, to check if it's increasing rapidly. – kos Jul 15 '15 at 17:35
  • 1
    Also it sounds a little weird that the fact that the hard drive on which someone is working on is failing or not is deemed as an off-topic concern and not a crucial part of administering an Ubuntu machine. – kos Jul 15 '15 at 17:38
  • 1
    @A.B. I was first to vote as "unclear" when links to local files were posted. You can see it in edit history. Then retracted. But people just followed I guess. But I do not see the first edition of the post. Vote to reopen. – Pilot6 Jul 15 '15 at 17:51
  • 1
    There are a ton of SMART questions and answers over on Super User. Interpreting SMART results is not really OS-dependent. –  Jul 16 '15 at 01:08
  • I don't see what this has to do with Ubuntu. At all. – Lightness Races in Orbit Jul 16 '15 at 09:53

2 Answers2

13

All life is doomed eventually! ;-)

But your hard disk looks like it's got a pretty healthy life ahead of it. Especially look at the last column: Assessment is OK everywhere!

Interpreting all of your data is going to be too broad to answer here. For more information on SMART technology, have a look at this excellent Q&A.

On the 5 bad sectors: the time that a hard disk was manufactured without any bad sectors is long gone: nowadays they have a number of spare sectors which are swapped out automatically without you even noticing. So yours has 5% of its spare sectors allocated already, which isn't a big deal. Mine has 140 sectors out of 200 allocated and I'm not worried (yet)... ;-)

Which means you still have to run back-ups! (there are other ways to lose data then a failed hard disk)

Community
  • 1
Fabby
  • 34,259
  • 1
    Due to your first sentence: it is still important to keep current backups even if the harddisk reports good health. – Simon Richter Jul 15 '15 at 17:37
  • 1
    @SimonRichter: True! Answer adapted and thanks for the upvote and feed-back! :-) – Fabby Jul 15 '15 at 17:49
  • The linked article (on cyberciti.biz) doesn't seem to have anything about interpreting the SMART data - it seems to be more about different ways to get the data with a few sample outputs. It doesn't, for example, say anything about what "Reallocated Sector Count" means or what the number implies about hard drive health. – R.M. Jul 15 '15 at 20:56
  • @R.M.: Oops... I seem to have bookmarked the wrong page! Looking for the real one! Ah! Why not link to an answer on this site – Fabby Jul 15 '15 at 21:33
  • 1
    All life is doomed eventually, indeed. All hard drives equally, even though they are not actually alive ;-) Good answer though. To my mind, it could be even better by introducing other tools Ubuntu has to monitor HD health, not only SMART analysis. Some interfaces (e.g. USB) don't support this. – ALAN WARD Jul 15 '15 at 22:13
  • @ALANWARD I agree, but that would make the answer too long and not relevant to the OP's original question as he/she/it is worried about all the non-zero numbers in SMART! ;-) (And it's good to know I made a few people smile today...) – Fabby Jul 15 '15 at 22:18
6

I doubt it is a problem. In general I would expect the Assessment column to show something else than "ok".

Besides that the general conclusion in the images is "Disk is OK, 16 bad sectors".

A.B.
  • 90,397
Rinzwind
  • 299,756