Comment 230 for bug 59695

Chris:
> Thanks for reminding me that the Old_age values don't always
> necessarily start at 100.

Np..

> I apologise if anyone thinks I am being harsh, but I see a lot of hair
> pulling about how drives are going to die in 6 months, with numbers that
> are very hard to interpret (something I am clearly guilty of, because
> there were some mistakes in my comment).

Bah. I myself was rather grumpy and frustrated yesterday, so I should
be the one to apologize. I know this is a very cloudy issue with *many*
areas of potential misinterpretation -- I've posted things I've been
corrected about as well (and even argued the incorrect point ;-).

> It's also interesting to see VALUEs of 001 in ubuntu_demon's comment - I
> find it extremely hard to believe that this is actually true. It's yet
> more evidence of vendor specific SMART behaviour, which puts even more
> doubt on the available data, especially since those posts don't appear
> to be shortly followed by VALUEs of 000 with a FAILING_NOW tag.

I have to agree about the potential oddness of a value of 001, with the
reserve that it is still very possible that the numbers are correct.
This may be a case where load_cycle_count's raw value may be of use --
check the values, wait for the click, check the values, and see if it
has increased by one (in which case at least the raw value is probably
correct). This can then be compared against the spec sheet.

Of course, the preferred route would be, as you mentioned, download the
manufacturer's utility and run it.