Question: I’m beginning to worry about my ~3yr old WD Green drive. In the last few days i’ve noticed that my media player is acting weird, it won’t move to the next track after a song has finished and also won’t play new songs when I double click.
So, I downloaded the “smartmontools” package and used “sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb2” to check out the drive. Here is a snapshot of the output:
?SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16Vendor 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 ?164 ?163 ?021 ?Pre-fail ?Always ?- ?6758 ?4 Start_Stop_Count ?0x0032 ?099 ?099 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?1353 ?5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct ?0x0033 ?200 ?200 ?140 ?Pre-fail ?Always ?- ?0 ?7 Seek_Error_Rate ?0x002e ?100 ?253 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?0 ?9 Power_On_Hours ?0x0032 ?092 ?092 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?5846 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 ?099 ?099 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?1201192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 ?200 ?200 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?61193 Load_Cycle_Count ?0x0032 ?200 ?200 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?1353194 Temperature_Celsius ?0x0022 ?124 ?112 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?26196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 ?200 ?200 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?0197 Current_Pending_Sector ?0x0032 ?200 ?200 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?0198 Offline_Uncorrectable ?0x0030 ?200 ?200 ?000 ?Old_age ?Offline ?- ?0199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count ?0x0032 ?200 ?198 ?000 ?Old_age ?Always ?- ?3311200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate ?0x0008 ?200 ?200 ?000 ?Old_age ?Offline ?- ?0
I’m worried most about the “Pre-fail” rows.. does this mean that the drive could fail at any time or what?
Answer: If you read the column headers, you’d see that pre-fail is the type of statistic that’s collected not the status. The When_Failed column being empty should also give you some hints about whether or not anything has failed (nothing has).
When in doubt, read the manpage or look for documentation on your problem.