02
Section 02 · 4 guides
Reading the Warnings
Drives rarely fail without saying something first. The trouble is that they say it in vendor-specific raw fields, next to a dozen counters that never mattered. This is how to tell the signal from the arithmetic.
- 3AttributesReallocated (05), pending (197), offline uncorrectable (198). The surface telling on itself.
- 2ReadingsOne value means almost nothing. Direction over a week is the whole signal.
- 1Long testRead-only, end to end. Where it stops is where you stop trusting the disk.
Everything in this section
What the drive is trying to tell you.
- What SMART Is Really Telling YouThe handful of attributes that matter, and the many that do not.
- Short Test, Long Test, and ScrubsWhat each actually checks, and how often to run them.
- Pending and Reallocated SectorsThe two counters worth setting an alarm on.
- Noticing Before It MattersGetting a machine to tell you, rather than finding out on restore day.
The other rooms
Kept running by
The Bench Roll
Eleven names who keep the lights on in this room. Listed here, marked as what they are, and never mixed into the writing.
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