Some things for the future...

Would be VERY helpful to see (a) temperatures, and (b) drive "space" status (used, unused) in the top left disk display. These are things that one would like to be able to "see at a glance" rather than having to look at the drives individually. Also would be nice to see (c) current thruput there as well.

The window expansions as done in the Remote Alert Add-In would be a great way to incorporate an optional expansion there.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

I've started documenting the "new features" list and the first two are definitely on the list. The jury is out on the throughput. It's funny you mention this...my add-in is also featured on Home Server Land (I spoke with Alexander Kent there via email) and recently made its way to We Got Served as well, the latter through no intervention on my part. Someone mentioned "disk management watch out!"

It was never my intention to encroach upon or usurp the Disk Management add-in. I personally run that add-in and think it's great; in fact I should be tipping my hat at Disk Management because that, along with HD Sentinel (http://www.hdsentinel.com), are what gave me the inspiration for Home Server SMART.

Some folks also suggested making the HDD serial number and a couple other items available in my Physical Disk Information pane, and it made me start thinking, "Golly this is going to start looking a LOT like Disk Management."

I'm doing this as a hobby, and while I do accept donations, I don't intend to profit from this. At the same time, I really don't want to be stepping on anyone's toes either.

Danke,
Matt

_________________
Matt Sawyer
Owner, Dojo North Software, LLC

HP EX490, 4GB, E5300, 15TB - Server 2012 - Sharing and Streaming
HP EX487, 4GB, E5300, 13TB - Server 2012 Essentials - Backups

msawyer91, Thanks for the add-in im excited to use it. As you were talking about the disk management add-in I was thinking maybe you guys could collaberate on an update to yours or his. Seems that a collaberation of the 2 of your is win win for the WHS community.

Great work thanks again.

Im not sure how to read some of the data's How can I tell if some of the data is extremely important. I have a few bad sectors. I think it could be related to the firmware update for the 1.5tb drive but Im not sure the degraded status and what I should look for.

Bad sectors are hardware faults, not something caused by a software update.

Many disks have a bad sector here and there. Frequently you are totally unaware of them. (Check the SMART help on this topic -- nice writeup!) If it is a small number AND IF IT IS NOT INCREASING OVER TIME it can be ignored. If you start to see in increasing toward the threshold THEN it is time to get a spare to have on hand.

I have been known in the past to rotate disks with bad sectors into long-term backup roles where they might sit for a month or two, get a backup and then sit again. I currently have three drives with bad sectors. One in a backup drive on my MSS (used daily for a week then rotated off-line for two weeks) has one bad sector. One in my test machine has three bad sectors. Another in my test machine, the System Drive no less) has increased the bad sector count from 4 to 24 just in the time I have had this Add-In installed. That system has been a bit unstable for some time now -- I had been suspecting the controller! But I doubt I'll spend much time worrying about it.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

This is correct. A bad sector is a physical location on the disk that, for whatever reason, the disk's onboard controller (the circuit board on the disk)--which does include the firmware, has determined is unsuitable for data storage. This could be a manufacturing flaw, contamination (i.e. dust) in the disk chamber, damage from a head crash, "wearing out" (yes, it happens), damage from a power surge, etc.



Google conducted research in 2007, and their research found that over 60% of disks fail within 30-60 days of the first bad sector being detected. For this reason, I consider ANY number of bad sectors as being "degraded" even if the threshold is not violated. My help document describes several "super-critical" attributes where any problems trigger degradation, even if the threshold is still okay.

I have a disk on my WHS with 13 bad sectors, but just 1 reallocation event. This means the bad sectors were detected and remapped in a single operation. Usually when a large number of sectors are remapped in a singe operation, it's usually either 1) a manufacturing defect on an area of the disk or 2) a head crash (the head scraped multiple disk sectors). The latter usually will result in death of the drive in fairly short order (minutes, hours or days; weeks if you're lucky). I however used the disk for months afterwards without any increase and thus I chose to ignore them.

Wikipedia article on SMART (plenty of gory details): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
Google's research from 2007 "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population": http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Danke,
Matt

_________________
Matt Sawyer
Owner, Dojo North Software, LLC

HP EX490, 4GB, E5300, 15TB - Server 2012 - Sharing and Streaming
HP EX487, 4GB, E5300, 13TB - Server 2012 Essentials - Backups

Still a bit confused on the SMART details. I have 2 drives with Bad Sectors, one with 45, the other with 6. Neither has an Allocation Event. Can I assume this is the way it came from the factory since I purchased these new 4-5 months ago? Both reflect as healthy drives looking at them with a few different tools. Thanks.

Matt: I certainly agree with watching for bad sectors and reallocations and I do understand the research. But I also note that some disks with bad sectors hang in for YEARS. I would suggest keeting track of the historical counts for these parameters and issuing a notification at any time the counts increase.

This should be tied to the disk's ID, nit to the physical location, as (a) other than the System Disk the others can be placed in any slot and may move around as units are serviced, and, (b) some drives used for backups may be rotated in and out of the server over time. If the history is maintained on the basis of a physical location such disk exchanges may lead to inaccurate indications.

MRL_MS: I, too, have a disk with bad sectors (3) and no reallocation. (This is another backup disk that I rotate in/out of my server.) I don't know what the current techniques are for manufacturing disks, but I recall that ome manufacturer, ages ago, used to just skip them if found during the initialization step in manufacturing. Reallocation would occur only in the sectors failed later. So your theory is possible.

Maybe Matt or someone else can shed some additional light on this topic...

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

John,

You've definitely got some good points here, and I've been thinking about the new features list.

I recently set up BugNET, an open source issue tracking tool, on my site. I encourage you all to check it out and register. This will allow you to report issues--bugs, feature requests, etc. The great thing about BugNET is that it's a full-featured issue tracking, and even supports notifications. So if you post an item in there, you'll be notified when I take action on it, whether it's to add a comment, say I'm working on it, close it, etc.

You can find that here: http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/bugtraq

One of my favorite disk tools, Hard Disk Sentinel, has the ability to set an "offset" on various attributes. For example, if you have 3 bad sectors, you can set the bad sector offset to -3, so your disk "appears" to have zero. It's a nifty way of allowing you to "ignore" issues so you can very quickly see if the problems are growing.

John and MRL_MS - I've yet to see a disk that has bad sectors but no reallocations. I would concur with the theory that the disk was released with bad sectors from the factory. A refurb, perhaps? It's an accepted fact that all disks come from the factory with bad sectors, but they're usually pre-mapped and not shown in the SMART tables. SMART is only supposed to show bad sectors that were detected since the disk was first used by a user after it left the factory. But I suppose there's no requirement that manufacturers adhere to that.

The first hard disk I ever owned was in an IBM PS/1 that I bought in 1991. It was a 30 MB drive and it had 10 bad sectors consuming 10240 KB of the disk. That's how it came from the factory. On a 30 MB disk in 1991, 10 KB was a LOT of space!

Thus I believe the bad sectors you're seeing are likely from the factory.

I certainly concur with John's thought of being able to "ignore" existing issues so Home Server SMART won't nag about them; it'll only start complaining if they get worse.

Like I said, if y'all don't mind...please visit the aforementioned site and log the issues as well as any new features you'd like to see!

Danke,
Matt

_________________
Matt Sawyer
Owner, Dojo North Software, LLC

HP EX490, 4GB, E5300, 15TB - Server 2012 - Sharing and Streaming
HP EX487, 4GB, E5300, 13TB - Server 2012 Essentials - Backups

Thanks for the link...

I ass-u-me yoiu have a handle on the items I posted above so I won't be posting those, only anything new...

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Thank you again,

I know this drive is not going to die today, but it's life is coming to an end. Need a new HDD for some of my backups

_________________
Have you backed up your data lately?

Very cool add-in.

The OS drive in my EX485 shows 4 bad sectors and 4 reallocated sectors. MSS reports it as healthy. I'll keep an eye on it, but does anyone know at what point it might become an HP warranty issue - short of outright failure?

My other 1TB and 2TB WD EADS GP drives are squeaky clean!

BK

HP replaced my ex487's D: drive under warranty with it reporting only 2 bad sectors from the Smart add-in. They required I run sea tools long ?dst? test and provide the output code. But it was easy for them to do the exchange. They placed a hold on my CC until the defective drive was received back.

Thanks for the info. Do I pull the drive, install SeaTools on my PC, connect drive with an interface cable and test?

BK

BK[/quote]

HP replaced my ex487's D: drive under warranty with it reporting only 2 bad sectors from the Smart add-in. They required I run sea tools long ?dst? test and provide the output code. But it was easy for them to do the exchange. They placed a hold on my CC until the defective drive was received back.[/quote]

Thanks for the info. Do I pull the drive, install SeaTools on my PC, connect drive with an interface cable and test?

BK[/quote]



Yes, exactly that. If the drive fails, they will replace it. Mine passed the short dst tests fine, and failed the long dst test the 2nd run through.

My OS drive seems to be OK - ran it through two cycles of seatools "long generic" at 2+ hours each and no problems reported. I'll keep an eye on things over time with the add-in.

BK