Re: Determination of the HDD SMART health status

Thanks for your answer. I have been checking the source code a bit - it is true that the utility just returns what the drive says but it first tries to read the IE log page (using LOG SENSE) before performing a REQUEST SENSE. That is why getting the SMART health status from the drive works even if SMART is disabled. I agree that failing the drive seems to happen late in most cases.

BR
Ivo

From: Robert S [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2015 12:29 AM
To: Ivo Stojan; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [smartmontools-support] Determination of the HDD SMART health status

The smartctl utility doesn't determine the health status at all. The determination is made by the drive's firmware and smartctl just reports back what the firmware says.

In all the cases I can remember, the firmware seems to fail the drive if any of the attributes is at or below the threshold. Of course, this is pretty late in the game...
On 3/27/2015 6:12 AM, Ivo Stojan wrote:
Hi

I am curious to know how is the SMART health status determined exactly by the smartctl utility. Is it determined by some logic in the utility based on info obtained by REQUEST SENSE and/or some other commands or it is simply fetched from the HDD? In the latter case my next question is how and from where.

I am asking because I have noticed that this health status can contain PFA codes even if informational exceptions are disabled (the HDD logs the data but reporting is explicitly disabled).

Thanks in advance.

BR
Ivo




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