SMART Status of SSDs and SMART Utility

Question

Level 1

0 points

SMART Status of SSDs and SMART Utility

Yesterday I received a new 240GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro for use as the boot drive. It works fine so far, but when I checked its SMART status today I got contradictory results:

SMART Utility reported 6272 reallocated bad sectors,
SMART Reporter signaled "S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK",
as did Disk Utility.

Does anybody know if SMART status and criteria are comparable for HDDs and for SSDs? Is SMART Utility's alert reason for concern?

Thanks for any informed opinion.

MacPro 2*Quad 2009, GTX285, 16MB; MacBook Pro 15" 2008., Mac OS X (10.6.4), Airport Extreme, Airport Express (Airtunes), FirmTek-Seritek eSATA card

Posted on Sep 25, 2010 12:41 PM

Reply

Answer 1

romko23

Level 2

408 points

Sep 25, 2010 6:39 PM in response to sgfx

Smart utility is a garbage program... I wouldn't trust it.. better to run Techtool Pro as it will give you the truth about your hard drive.. I just bought a new Hitachi 1TB drive and already its reporting one bad sector and marking it as FAILING. But, when I ran techtool pro, the drive reported no bad sectors..

STAY AWAY from smart utility - their program really is garbage.

Reply

Answer 2

Sep 25, 2010 6:53 PM in response to sgfx

Google's big study of their huge number of Hard Drives showed that once a Hard Drive gets a Bad Block, it is on a downhill path that will result in its failure and replacement within a few months.

This is because of the nature of the heads and the media, and the "clean room" inside a Hard Drive.

There are no comparable parts inside a solid state drive. When it gets an error, it should be spared out, and nothing should be implied about its future ability to record data or its imminent failure.

In short, they are not comparable in the slightest. Enjoy your Solid State Drive. The only time to worry is when you have no more spare blocks -- and you get your next error.

Reply

Answer 3

sgfx Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 26, 2010 12:16 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks both of you.

I know that SSDs work differently than HDDs and have different hardware. So, according to your posts, an SSD's SMART status is completely different from a HDD's and SMART Utility cannot distinguish them?

Reply