Product manual

14 Barracuda 18FC Product Manual, Rev. B
with a Medium (03h) or Hardware error (04h) reported in the Sense Key. This is an unrecoverable seek error.
Unrecoverable seek errors are classified as failures for MTBF calculations.
5.2 S.M.A.R.T.
S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. This technology is intended
to recognize conditions that indicate imminent drive failure and is designed to provide sufficient warning of a
failure to allow you to back up the data before an actual failure occurs.
Note. The drive’s firmware monitors specific attributes for degradation over time but can’t predict instanta-
neous drive failures.
Each monitored attribute has been selected to monitor a specific set of failure conditions in the operating per-
formance of the drive and the thresholds are optimized to minimize “false” and “failed” predictions.
Controling S.M.A.R.T.
The operating mode of S.M.A.R.T. is controlled by the DEXCPT and PERF bits on the Informational Exceptions
Control mode page (1Ch). Use the DEXCPT bit to enable or disable the S.M.A.R.T. feature. Setting the DEX-
CPT bit disables all S.M.A.R.T. functions. When enabled, S.M.A.R.T. collects on-line data as the drive performs
normal read and write operations. When the PERF bit is set, the drive is considered to be in “On-line Mode
Only” and will not perform off-line functions.
You can measure off-line attributes and force the drive to save the data by using the RTZ command. Forcing
S.M.A.R.T. resets the timer so that the next scheduled interrupt is in two hours.
You can interrogate the drive through the host to determine the time remaining before the next scheduled mea-
surement and data logging process occurs. To accomplish this, issue a Log Sense command to log page 0x3E.
This allows you to control when S.M.A.R.T. interruptions occur. Forcing S.M.A.R.T. with the RTZ command
resets the timer.
Performance impact
S.M.A.R.T. attribute data is saved to the disc so the events that caused a predictive failure can be recreated.
The drive measures and saves parameters once every two hours subject to an idle period on the interface. The
process of measuring off-line attribute data and saving data to the disc is uninterruptable. The maximum on-
line only (DEXCPT = 0; PERF = 1) processing delay is 35 msec. The maximum fully-enabled (DEXCPT = 0,
PERF = 0) processing delay is 220 msec.
Reporting control
Reporting is controlled in the Informational Exceptions Control mode page (1Ch). Subject to the reporting
method, the firmware will issue to the host an 01-5Dxx sense code. The error code is preserved through bus
resets and power cycles.
Determining rate
S.M.A.R.T. monitors the rate at which errors occur and signals a predictive failure if the rate of degraded errors
increases to an unacceptable level. To determine rate, error events are logged and compared to the number of
total operations for a given attribute. The interval defines the number of operations over which to measure the
rate. The counter that keeps track of the current number of operations is referred to as the Interval Counter.
S.M.A.R.T. measures error rates. All errors for each monitored attribute are recorded. A counter keeps track of
the number of errors for the current interval. This counter is referred to as the Failure Counter.
Attribute FRU code Predictive failure description
LBA reassignment
04
LBA reassignment exceeding limits
Read data errors
32
Read data errors exceeding limits
Recovered TAs
37
ERP TAs exceeding limits
Preamp detectable TAs
38
WUS TAs exceeding limits
Seek errors
43
Seek error rate exceeding limits
Spin-up errors
5B
Spin-up retry count exceeding limits