SSD – smartctl – Status

I have a SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series SSD in my MacBook Pro. In my work, I need to analyse huges amounts of data. I have php scripts that extract the data, build csv sheets, then gnuplot generates hundreds of graphics. The graphics are browsed. A few relevant are selected and the rest, along with the csv and gnuplot instruction are discarded. This makes me generate around 5 - 60 GB of data daily, 6 days a week. So the SSD sectors gets rewritten a lot.

Now, I have used smartctl on the ssd to check its status, but I am unable to understand the result. The SSD is 3.5 months old.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1672
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   097   097   000    Old_age   Always       -       2132
177 Wear_Leveling_Count     0x0013   096   096   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       141
179 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot   0x0013   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count_Total  0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0013   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
187 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0032   070   040   000    Old_age   Always       -       30
195 ECC_Error_Rate          0x001a   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
199 CRC_Error_Count         0x003e   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
235 POR_Recovery_Count      0x0012   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1997
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       6256876130

What does Wear_Leveling_Count mean ? I get 141, but everybody says it should be less than 99. What are Airflow_Temperature_Cel and Total_LBAs_Written and POR_Recovery_Count. What are the best values ? Should I expect a failure any time soon ?

Also, my 1GB interal harddrive (replacing the optical drive) reads:

192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1211180777512

What's wrong with it ?

Solution 1:

Airflow_Temperatore_Cel is the temperature in Celsius. Total_LBAs_Written is the number of sectors written. The POR_Recovery_Count and Wear_Leveling_Count seem to be samsung specific values, so you'd have to ask them for the details, but the VALUE/THRES for the wear leveling appears to indicate you have used up about 4% of the drive's life. The Power-Off_Retract_Count seems to be completely bogus as there is no way it could possibly be that large.

Solution 2:

177 - Wear_Leveling_Count

This attribute represents the number of times a block has been erased. This value is directly related to the lifetime of the SSD. The raw value of this attribute shows the average erase cycles of total blocks.

235 - POR Recovery Count

A count of the number of sudden power off cases. If there is a sudden power off, the firmware must recover all of the mapping and user data during the next power on. This is a count of the number of times this has happened.

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/downloads/document/SSD_Application_Note_SMART_final.pdf