On Jul 24, 2011, at 10:12 AM, Richard Peskin wrote:
> One of our iMacs (2009 i7) reports a SMART disk error when using either Disk
> Utility or OnyX. Disk Utility reports a SMART status failure. I assume this
> means the SMART firmware on the disk controller has failed. Is there any way
> I can get further information about this failure? All Volumes on the disk
> (partitions) are performing normally.
> thanks,
Firmware on the disk controller isn't the problem, SMART is reporting a disk
error of some sort and probably means imminent failure, so the top priority is
to prepare the drive for eminent failure: back it up, make sure you have a
ready drive available.
Then, if you really want more info you can use smartmontools (available on
macports), basically:
smartctl -s on /dev/disk0 {turns smart reporting on}
smartctl -a /dev/disk0 {all smart information on the disk}
I'm assuming disk0, but you need to know which drive you got the error for.
Click on the disk icon in Disk Utility and do command-i and the 2nd line
contains Disk Identifier. Don't enter the slice with smartctl; whole disk
designation only, i.e. disk0, disk1, disk2, not disk1s2 or whatever.
The -a report will contain, in the 2nd section, a grid that shows attributes
and which one is causing the SMART warning. It might be pre-fail (bad) or it
might just be old age (not good but may not indicate in imminent failure - it
depends on the attribute and value).
Normally it looks something like this:
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 184 172 021 Pre-fail Always
- 1775
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always
- 357
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always
- 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always
- 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always
- 1621
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always
- 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always
- 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always
- 273
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always
- 271
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 133 133 000 Old_age Always
- 202508
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 118 108 000 Old_age Always
- 29
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 100 253 000 Old_age Offline
- 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always
- 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline
- 0
If this is not revealing you could run either a short or long test with:
smartctl -t short /dev/disk0
smartctl -t long /dev/disk0
The short test takes two minutes. The long test is variable. It might take an
hour it might take three. It depends on the size and speed of the drive and
also what errors it starts finding. However, I would not screw around with
these tests before you've done a full backup. They work in off-line mode which
means the tests are pre-empted by system disk usage. If you're doing a backup
and also do a disk test, chances are the test will timeout or won't actually
start until after the backup is done. And the drive could die at anytime so
first priority is to backup important data.
Chris Murphy
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