Unrealistic SMART values

[idata]

Hi there,

I bought my Intel 320 SSD in January and use it as my system drive. So, not much writing, I just boot from it. My data is stored elsewhere.

Nevertheless I get these terrifying SMART values:

241 Host_Writes_32MiB 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 48989

242 Host_Reads_32MiB 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 19852

Does this tell me that 1.53 TiB were written on this drive?! Because that's pretty much impossible. I rarely write anything on it, so the Reads value should be higher than the Writes value (they're both too high, though).

Here are the other values, some of which I'm unable to interpret:

3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0020 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1591

12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 305

170 Reserve_Block_Count 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0

171 Program_Fail_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

172 Erase_Fail_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 100 100 090 Old_age Always - 0

187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

192 Unsafe_Shutdown_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 23

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

225 Host_Writes_32MiB 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 48989

226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 34264840

227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1

228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 2366980413

232 Available_Reservd_Space 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

What's going on here?

[idata]

Hello parsec,

That fancy Intel thing gives me the following SMART data:

Says exactly the same.

[CFran6]

The ~2.4 times larger number of writes may be the result of some application caching file data in memory and doing frequent flushes (DBMS?). Some tool of choice might expose which processes produce these I/O rates. My favorite: http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/ http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/ - run as admin and observe the "Disk" tab.

You could also clear the Timed Workload attributes (see above) and observe attribute 227/E3 which reports the percentage of reads.

[idata]

Hello Christian,

after executing 'smartctl -t vendor,0x40 /dev/sda' and waiting some minutes smartctl says:

3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0020 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1602

12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 308

170 Reserve_Block_Count 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0

171 Program_Fail_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

172 Erase_Fail_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 100 100 090 Old_age Always - 0

187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

192 Unsafe_Shutdown_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 23

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

225 Host_Writes_32MiB 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 49181

226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 65535

227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 65535

228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 65535

232 Available_Reservd_Space 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

241 Host_Writes_32MiB 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 49181

242 Host_Reads_32MiB 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 20018

The values 226, 227 and 228 seem a little confusing.

Oh and apparently 6 GiB were written in the last two days. When this is really true, some process behaves really strangely.

I don't have a DBMS, this is just my desktop computer. IOtop says that chromium writes to disk frequently. I didn't think this was dangerous until now.

I deleted ~/.cache and mounted it as a 1 GiB tmpfs ramdisk, just in case it's really chromium's fault.

I'm a little worried about my SSD, this can't be healthy. 😞

[CFran6]

The attributes 226, 227 and 228 are held at 65535 (0xffff) until the workload timer reaches some limit. The X25 G2 spec mentioned 60 minutes, the 320 spec does no longer document these attributes at all.

(BTW: The '-t vendor,0x40' option was added due to a request from an Intel engineer 🙂

[idata]

I tried it after 60 and 65 minutes, still 65535, but now it shows some values.

226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 58

228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 78

226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 52

228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 83

226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 51

228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 88

226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 50

228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 93

226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 48

228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 123

226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 43

228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 183

Steadily decreasing.