Question: I had a random report in an open Terminal today saying that “My hard drive is about to fail!”
I did some tests and I’m not sure how bad this is. The computer is acting fine but I went ahead and pushed all my work to github. I don’t want to continue working on this computer if there is a chance it’ll just crash and I’ll lose everything.
The drive is an HDD – Western Digital Caviar SE Serial ATA
What should a normal smartctl look like for a stable drive?
SMART Attributes:
Test Fails:
Answer:
I did some tests and I’m not sure how bad this is
Short Answer:
Backup this drive and replace immediately.
Long Answer:
A company called Backblaze has collected data on hard drive failures. It has released that data in company blogs, highlighting which manufacturer’s drives failed more often than others.
In a recent blog it published data indicating exactly which 5 SMART attributes indicate imminent drive failure:
From experience, we have found the following 5 SMART metrics indicate impending disk drive failure:
- SMART 5 �C Reallocated_Sector_Count.
- SMART 187 �C Reported_Uncorrectable_Errors.
- SMART 188 �C Command_Timeout.
- SMART 197 �C Current_Pending_Sector_Count.
- SMART 198 �C Offline_Uncorrectable.
We chose these 5 stats based on our experience and input from othersin the industry because they are consistent across manufacturers andthey are good predictors of failure.
The article goes on to suggest:
SMART 5: Reallocated_Sector_Count1-4 keep an eye on it, more than 4 replaceSMART 187: Reported_Uncorrect1 or more replaceSMART 188: Command_Timeout1-13 keep an eye on it, more than 13 replaceSMART 197: Current_Pending_Sector_Count1 or more replaceSMART 198: Offline_Uncorrectable1 or more replace
In your case 5 (raw value 2), 197 (raw value 484) and 198 (raw value 371) are showing signs of failure.