Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: What does S.M.A.R.T. stand for?
A: The S.M.A.R.T. is "Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology". It is a standard interface
allowing a hard disk drive to check its status, report it to host system, and provide some
estimation for a failure date. To learn more about S.M.A.R.T. technology
click here.
Q: Are my drives supported by Drive Health?
A: All SMART capable drives are supported by Drive Health. For today most of HDDs supports
SMART technology and can be monitored by our program. You can find supported model list
(not complete!) by clicking here.
Q: What is T.E.C.?
A: T.E.C. is "Threshold Exceeded Condition" and basically it means a disk failure.
When your Drive Health software reports a "Nearest T.E.C."
you should consider it as a "Failure date".
Q: What is the meaning of the "Nearest T.E.C. unknown" disk status? Is it good or bad?
A: If Drive Health shows you unknown T.E.C. date this means your disk drive is healthy! You only
need to continue monitoring of this disk to prevent possible unexpected failure in future.
Q: I've installed Drive Health and it predicted a very close T.E.C. date after a few hours of usage. What should I do?
A: The T.E.C. date prediction is based on a analysis of the parameter degradation history.
This means that DH is unable to accurately predict the failure if still there is not enough data
accumulated in history about previous parameter state. In our experience it requires at least two
weeks of daily disk monitoring, to make accurate failure predictions. Just continue disk monitoring
- the T.E.C. date will be changed after a day or two.
Q: What is S.M.A.R.T attribute?
A: S.M.A.R.T attribute is a specific property(parameter) of disk being monitored. The attribute
is referred to either by its number or by its descriptive name. Attribute value is a positive
integral number, usually in range from 1 to 100 (or sometimes 1 to 200). Maximum values are good,
minimum values indicate that some component of the disk is about to fail. Specific treshold is
assigned to each attribute. Once the value drops below this threshold, S.M.A.R.T considers disk
to be faulty. Some attributes are considered life-critical and others are merely "informative".
T.E.C. with an "informative" attribute does not neccessarily means drive failiure. Drive Health
wisely controls the drive parameters and warn you only about critical attributes changes.
Q: Are Drive Health predictions accurate?
A: Drive Health can only predict a gradual degradation of the disk. It cannot and it does not
predict catastrophic events, including but not limited to head crashes, power spikes and so on.
There is a general rule to follow when interpreting Drive Health results: If Drive Health reports a
close T.E.C. date , it's time to begin backup of critical data. Get more information
about failure prediction by clicking here
Q: What is "Spin up time"? My disk reports "Spin up time" about 75, is it about to crash?
A: "Spin up time" describes amount of time it took to spin the platters up to their rated
rotation speed (usually 5400 or 7200 RPM). Values above 80 should be considered good. Values
between 70 and 80 are still acceptable. There is a known issue with Quantum (Maxtor) hard drives
- out-of-the-box new drives drop "Spin up time" to 70 within first two weeks of use, causing
program to predict failure within a month. This is usually a false alarm. After some initial
"burn-in" period "Spin up time" becomes constant and the drive functions normally.
Q: What is "Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate"?
A: UDMA controller performs an error checking on data it receives from HDD, ensuring
that data was not damaged while transmitted over the cable. Each time the error is detected,
controller requests a retransmission, thus slowing down the overall transfer speed. Lower
values of "Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate" correspond to higher number of errors, usually indicating
a cabling problem.
Q: How can I measure drive temperature using S.M.A.R.T tools?
A: Some modern hard drives are equipped with thermal sensors and can report
their temperature to host system using S.M.A.R.T technology (attribute C2h).
If you drive has temperature sensor the Drive Health will indicate its temperature in
the "Meaning" cell of the C2h attribute (see the screenshot)
Q: What other S.M.A.R.T attributes exist?
A: See the Attributes Meaning section.
Q: Do you plan to support RAID and SCSI controllers in Drive Health ?
A: Unfortunately, the current version of Drive Health does not supports RAID/SCSI controllers :(
But we are currently working on it and hope we'll implement it very soon! Please, keep tracking for our updates.
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