Question Conflicting HDD status: 'Pre-fail' and 'Old_age' in Smartmontools but 'Good' in CrystalDiskInfo ?

[billae]

Looking at the S.M.A.R.T. values in Smartmontools (here), I see entries labeled "Pre-fail" and "Old_age" in the Type column. However, CrystalDiskInfo (here) reports the same HDD status as Good. Is this normal or should I be concerned about the "Pre-fail" labels?​

 

[evermorex76]

Ignore that column, basically. "Type" means what kind of issue is indicated ONLY IF that value crosses its threshold. It doesn't mean that the value currently indicates it's about to fail or is old. For instance Raw_Read_Error_Rate's current value is 200, and the worst that it's ever been is 200, and threshold is 51. If it reaches 51 or less, then that is an indicator that it's about to fail. (Many SMART values start out at a high number that indicates "100% good" and the number gets lower as it gets worse.) Start_Stop_Count begins at 0, and there's no technical "good" or "bad" value for that so the threshold is 0. It just counts how many times the drive went to sleep or turned off and then started spinning again, but this does cause more wear to the components so if it was some massively high number it could be considered an indicator of old age. DiskInfo indicates Good because none of those SMART values have crossed their threshold to indicate a problem. Smartmontools is not doing a good job of giving the user context for those numbers; it's just throwing them at you and expecting you to understand and interpret them. At the very least it should do as DiskInfo does and say "none of these are a problem".

 

[SkyNetRising]

Looking at the S.M.A.R.T. values in Smartmontools (here), I see entries labeled "Pre-fail" and "Old_age" in the Type column.
Is this normal or should I be concerned about the "Pre-fail" labels?

Type - means type of the SMART attribute.
It doesn't mean (by itself), that attribute has reached old-age or pre-fail levels.
Only that at certain values it CAN reach old-age or pre-fail levels.

TLDR. If CrystaldiskInfo says, it's good, then it's good.
None of SMART attributes have reached old-age or pre-fail levels.

 

[billae]

Ignore that column, basically. "Type" means what kind of issue is indicated ONLY IF that value crosses its threshold. It doesn't mean that the value currently indicates it's about to fail or is old. For instance Raw_Read_Error_Rate's current value is 200, and the worst that it's ever been is 200, and threshold is 51. If it reaches 51 or less, then that is an indicator that it's about to fail. (Many SMART values start out at a high number that indicates "100% good" and the number gets lower as it gets worse.) Start_Stop_Count begins at 0, and there's no technical "good" or "bad" value for that so the threshold is 0. It just counts how many times the drive went to sleep or turned off and then started spinning again, but this does cause more wear to the components so if it was some massively high number it could be considered an indicator of old age. DiskInfo indicates Good because none of those SMART values have crossed their threshold to indicate a problem. Smartmontools is not doing a good job of giving the user context for those numbers; it's just throwing them at you and expecting you to understand and interpret them. At the very least it should do as DiskInfo does and say "none of these are a problem".

Thank you sooo much!

 

[Ralston18]

@billae

No matter what is indicated and possible meanings - be sure to do regular and verified backups.

At least 2 x copies of all important data to locations away from the host system.