Question: What are High Fly Writes that are tracked by SMART on a hard drives? Does a creeping number indicate issue or upcomming issues? And, why is it not tracked on all hard drives? My Western Digital does not have this but my seagates do.
Answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Known_ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes says:
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HDD producers implement a Fly Height Monitor that attempts to provide ?additional protections for write operations by detecting when a ?recording head is flying outside its normal operating range. If an ?unsafe fly height condition is encountered, the write process is ?stopped, and the information is rewritten or reallocated to a safe ?region of the hard drive. This attribute indicates the count of these ?errors detected over the lifetime of the drive.
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This feature is implemented in most modern Seagate drives and some of ?Western Digital s drives, beginning with the WD Enterprise WDE18300 ?and WDE9180 Ultra2 SCSI hard drives, and will be included on all ?future WD Enterprise products.
http://kb.acronis.com/content/9124 says:
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This parameter is considered informational by most hardware ?vendors. Although degradation of this parameter can be an indicator of ?drive aging and/or potential electromechanical problems, it does not ?directly indicate imminent drive failure. Regular backup is ?recommended. Pay closer attention to other parameters and overall ?drive health.