topic Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator in Solid State Drives (NAND)

Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

idata — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 14:48:54 GMT

Hi All,

I am working with a 100 GB 710 SSD and Intel's SSD Toolbox software, version 3.0.3. Can someone please explain why the S.M.A.R.T. parameter ID E1h (Host Writes Indicator) reports a value with a GB suffix? According to the description in the Intel SSD Toolbox User's Guide this value is a counter and states "This attribute reports the total number of sectors written by the host system. The raw value is increased by 1 for every 65,536 sectors written by the host. Use the Raw value for this attribute."

Is this value actually 1.0 x 109?

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

JAMES_J_Intel — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:41:18 GMT

SMART Data being misreported is a known issue.

The life of your SSD is not affected by this.

Regards,

Jim

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

idata — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 11:51:06 GMT

Hi Jim,

Thank you for the response. Is it just the "Host Writes Indicator" being misreported or all SMART parameters?

Regards,

Steve

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

CFran6 — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:39:52 GMT

All SMART attributes reported by SSD Toolbox match the Intel 710 Spec from September 2011. Only the interpretations of the raw attribute values of E1, F1 and F2 are incorrect.

The attributes F1/F2 (Total LBAs Written/Read) are not correctly defined in the 710 spec. These raw values do not count LBAs. Like with attribute E1, the raw values of F1/F2 are incremented after 64Ki logical sectors (32MiB) have been read/written.

The SSD toolbox interprets these as 64Mi sector counters. Divide the reported value by 1024 for the correct value: replace T by G, G by M, ...:-)

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

idata — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 19:20:25 GMT

Christian,

Thank you for the response but I'm not sure you covered my main question. The Intel SSD Toolbox is reporting the following for the Host Writes parameter E1:

ID Description Raw Value Normalized Threshold Action

E1 Host Writes 520.47 GB 100 0 Ready for use.

My question is how do I interpret the 520.47 GB counter value, if it truly is a counter?

520.47 GB = 558 850 000 000 Bytes of data?

Is this actually saying 520.47 x 109 which = 520 470 000 000 counts?

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

CFran6 — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:43:40 GMT

The underlying RAW value of attribute E1 is actually a counter with 64Ki sectors or 32MiBytes as unit of measure. The SSD toolbox converts this counter to G/TBytes but older versions apparently use a bogus factor.

After update to SSD Toolbox 3.1.1, the printed value looks good.

Alternatively, check the "Logical Sectors Read/Written" counters from ATA Device Statistics (smartctl -l devstat ...). Unlike SMART attributes, these counters are not allowed to be vendor specific.

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

idata — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 17:32:26 GMT

Christian,

Thank you that helped. However, the number I'm calculating for data written to my SSD seems enormous for the amount of time we used it (17.656656 Petabytes written to SSD). I downloaded the SSD Toolbox V3.1.1 and pulled in a raw E1 value of 501.47GB (BTY this value didn't change from my 3.0.3 toolbox version). We are using Intel's 710 Series 100 GB SSD which if I'm reading the specs correctly we have already exceed the max writes and the E9 Media Wearout Indicator is still sitting at 0.

Will you please confirm that my approach to calculating the total data written to our SSD during our workload test is correct?

The following are my calculations for determining the amount of data that was written to the SSD during our workload test:

E1 - Host Writes Raw Value = 501.84 GB

divide by 1024 Bytes per your note above to get counts value:

501.84 GB/1024 Bytes = 526217380 cnts.

multiply # of sectors per cnt:

526 217 380 cnts x 65, 535 sectors = 34,485,655,998,300 sectors written to SSD.

512 Bytes per sector to calculate the total data written to the SSD:

34,485,655,998,300 sectors x 512 Bytes = 17,656,655,871,129,600 Bytes Written.

17,656,655,871,129,600 Bytes = 17.656656 Petabytes of data written to SSD

Thank you.

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

CFran6 — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:52:22 GMT

No, this is not correct.

Here some test results from another 710 using Toolbox and another SMART tool which prints the raw values as is:

Output from Intel SSD Toolbox 3.1.1:

E1 Host Writes: 648,13 GB

...

F1 Total LBAs Written: 648,13 GB

F2 Total LBAs Read: 2.55 TB

Output from smartmontools 6.0 on same machine:

# smartctl -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/csmi1,5

smartctl 6.0 2012-10-10 r3643 [i686-w64-mingw32-win7(64)-sp1] (sf-6.0-1)

...

Model Family: Intel 710 Series SSDs

Device Model: INTEL SSDSA2BZ200G3

Firmware Version: 6PC10362

...

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAGS VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE

...

0xe1 Host_Writes_32MiB -O--CK 100 100 000 - 20740

...

0xf1 Host_Writes_32MiB -O--CK 100 100 000 - 20740

0xf2 Host_Reads_32MiB -O--CK 100 100 000 - 83455

...

Device Statistics (GP Log 0x04)

Page Offset Size Value Description

...

1 0x018 6 1359264008 Logical Sectors Written

1 0x020 6 1358197 Number of Write Commands

1 0x028 6 5469343050 Logical Sectors Read

1 0x030 6 1545915 Number of Read Commands

...

Results from SMART Attributes 0xE1/0xF1/0xF2:

20740 * 32 MiB = 663680 MiB = 648.125 GiB

83455 * 32 MiB = 2670560 MiB = 2607.968 GiB = 2.547 TiB

Results from Device Statistics Counters 0x018/0x028:

1359264008 * 0.5 KiB = 679632004 KiB = 663703.128 MiB = 648,147 GiB

5469343050 * 0.5 KiB = 2734671525 KiB = 2670577.66 MiB = 2607.986 GiB = 2.547 TiB

Conclusion: SSD Toolbox 3.1.1 prints a reasonable value for these attributes.

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

idata — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:59:52 GMT

Christian,

My real concern is how much data was written to the SSD during my workload media endurance test. So, are you saying that using SSD toolbox v3.1.1 my E1 Host Writes number of 501.84 GB is actually the amount of data that was written to my SSD. If this is not the case can you show me how I would calculate or determine how much data was actually written to my Solid State Drive?

Thank you.

Re: Series 710 SMART Parameter ID E1h - Host Writes Indicator

CFran6 — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:25:51 GMT

Yes, it is the amount of data as reported by the drive firmware.