start stop count in hdd

[Batman1121]

i was checking hd sentinel and noticed an entry called start/stop count ,so i checked online and somewhere it said that it shows how many times you have turned on your pc after completely turning it off or when pc wakes up from sleep mode.Is this right? because my start stop count is over 230 but my laptop is only a month old and i haven't even used it that much.

 

[hydranix]

Power saving options also stop the drive to save battery.

If you've ever went to open a file and heard the drive spin up, with a bit of lag before your file opened or allowed interaction, then that added a start/stop count.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

To my recollection, the start / stop count (SMART attribute 4) is how many times the spindle is. started and stopped. So when the HD goes to "sleep", the spindle stops and this counts

This different from power on cycles (SMART attribute 9) and power off cycles (SMART attribute 192)

The park count (SMART 193) .... how many times head parks .... is the one to worry about

EDIT : Added numbers from ATA Smart list at wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

04 0x04 Start/Stop Count - A tally of spindle start/stop cycles. The spindle turns on, and hence the count is increased, both when the hard disk is turned on after having before been turned entirely off (disconnected from power source) and when the hard disk returns from having previously been put to sleep mode

192 0xC0 Power-off Retract Count, Emergency Retract Cycle Count (Fujitsu), or Unsafe Shutdown Count - Count of times the heads are loaded off the media. Heads can be unloaded without actually powering off.[

193 0xC1 Load Cycle Count or Load/Unload Cycle Count - Count of load/unload cycles into head landing zone position.

Western Digital rates their VelociRaptor drives for 600,000 load/unload cycles, and WD Green drives for 300,000 cycles; the latter ones are designed to unload heads often to conserve power. On the other hand, the WD3000GLFS (a desktop drive) is specified for only 50,000 load/unload cycles.

Some laptop drives and "green power" desktop drives are programmed to unload the heads whenever there has not been any activity for a very short period of time, such as about five seconds. Many Linux installations write to the file system a few times a minute in the background. As a result, there may be 100 or more load cycles per hour, and the load cycle rating may be exceeded in less than a year

 

[hydranix]

Just as a note, SMART attribute numbers are rarely the same across manufacturers.

So if a certain attribute seems wacky (like 37323832432 relocated sectors, or write errors or something) it's not always what it seems.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The numbers were provided just to make them easy to find in the chart in the link given. Right above the chart it says "As manufacturers do not necessarily agree on precise attribute definitions and measurement units, the following list of attributes should be regarded as a general guide only."