About S.M.A.R.T. readings

S.M.A.R.T. technology is really interesting and is useful to address several HD related issues. SpeedFan can help you by showing S.M.A.R.T. readings from available HDs. Please note that HDs connected to some IDE RAID controllers might not show up. Supporting these controllers is not an easy task. If any manufacturer would like to be supported, I will be pleased to receive any kind of info from them :-)

When looking at the S.M.A.R.T. tab, you will have to select an HD from the available list. You will get something like this:

For every S.M.A.R.T. attribute you will get the current VALUE, the WORST that has ever been registered, the THRESHOLD and the RAW reading.

You will see an icon too:


 this attribute is OK

this attribute is approaching its threshold

this attribute has already reached its threshold
<none>
this attribute has not been labeled by the manufacturer as relevant neither for performances, nor for fitness

When any attribute reaches its threshold value, you should carefully consider replacing your HD. Anyway: not every attribute is considered as being "vital". Some of them are internally marked (by the manufacturer) as such, while others are not. Some other attributes are also marked as being performance related and others aren't. According to these settings, SpeedFan computes two indexes. One is FITNESS and the other one is PERFORMANCE. Both of these indexes will reach 0% when ANY of the relevant attributes reaches its threshold level. 100% means that everything is perfect.

Starting with SpeedFan 4.28, fitness and performance overall indicators are computed using a more advanced structure. While 0% is still used when any relevant attribute reaches its threshold, the full range from 1% up to 100% uses a non-linear, multi-range, approach. This is the result of a statistical analysis of thousands hard disks. The owners of SEAGATE hard disks now should see less frightening values. Seagate uses an unusual strategy when presenting current values for some attributes, like "seek error rate", which leads to values ranging around 55. The new way used by SpeedFan to compute fitness and reliability derives from the online in-depth analysis. Online in-depth analysis is an extremely powerful tool that applies only to EIDE/SATA hard disks and requires an active internet connection. You simply need to select one of your hard disks and then press the in-depth analysis button. A web page will open containing a full report about the status of your hard disk. What you will read is what an expert would say about your hard disk. This analysis is supported by a large database containing statistical data computed out of real hard disks. Computed statistical data is considered relevant only if enough valid hard disk reports were available when computing statistics. New databases will be generated often as new relevant data is available. If your hard disk is not in the current database, the analysis will still be conducted as if an expert did it. You can think of an expert looking at S.M.A.R.T. values from your hard disk and telling you about them. The expert can tell you a lot of things. If the expert already saw several hard disks like yours, he can say more specific things. The same thing happens with the in-depth analysis tool. The tool is currently available only online because it is under continuous development and refinement. This way you will get the most up-to-date report whichever SpeedFan version you will be using.

Note: you might need to enter CONFIGURE / INTERNET and set your HTTP PROXY configuration there.