Log is always empty

[smancuso]

Hi. I have been using HD Sentinel Pro for a while now, and I have noticed that the logs for my HDs are always empty, even when there are recent errors in the S.M.A.R.T. attributes (e.g. Spin Retry Count). I can't seem to find any way to get anything to show up in any log.

Could someone give me any guidance as to how I might convince this program to log errors?

Additionally, I seem to get a lot of Raw Read Error Rate and Seek Error Rate on older disks (e.g. one of them jumped from 26 million to 177 million Raw Read Errors in one day), though there are no other problems. Is there any way to log these, and also should I be concerned about increases in these attributes?

Note that the disks with errors and spinup are HDs connected via an SATA/USB external enclosure (Vantec).

Thanks for any help.
sam

[hdsentinel]

Generally, the log page should show changes detected in the critical S.M.A.R.T. attributes, for example (but not limited to) when the mentioned Spin Retry Count attribute changes.

For example:



As you can see, there are other errors logged in 2011 and the change of the "Spin Retry Count" attribute is logged as well now (and an alert e-mail sent as Hard Disk Sentinel configured to send alert when a new entry added to the log).

If the Spin Retry Count was not zero previously and Hard Disk Sentinel saved that value previously in its owns database on your system, then the log will not show error, just when that value changes.


Do you use Seagate hard disk? Those have very such high values for "Raw read error rate" and "Seek error rate" which is completely normal, as these are not the count of errors. Please check viewtopic.php?f=32&t=735 for more information about this topic.

Anyway, it is planned to create custom options where you can enable/disable logging the change of any attribute, that function will be available in a later version.

[smancuso]

Thanks for the reply. I am in fact using Seagate drives, so it is a bit of a relief to find out that these numbers aren't out of the ordinary. I guess I won't know if the log is in fact still working until there's a new error.

I do have a drive or two (again, Seagates) that have Health values at 88% and the Overview message is that there are problems in the spin up of the disk. Sometimes my enclosures aren't recognized by Windows (e.g. drive doesn't appear in Windows Explorer, and occasionally a message that I need to format the disk to use it), but that also happens with an HD that is considered "PERFECT", so I am not sure if that is contributing to the spin up problems.

Does this message appear only if there is a spin up problem recently, or is it the kind of thing that will always show up in the Overview after it happens the first time?

[hdsentinel]

The errors in the LOG should be always displayed - when Hard Disk Sentinel previously, any time detected that the hard disk status was better and then the hard disk status changed with time. Then it can detect this change and log immediately - so after this, the LOG page contains the problem(s).

If the hard disk had some problems "originally" and (for example) 88% health when it is first connected and Hard Disk Sentinel first detected it, the LOG will not show how and when these problems occured (as then it had no statistical information / previous status about the hard disk drive), so the LOG is empty, but the status of the drive will be saved.
So when the status later, any time changes (compared with the last known status saved by Hard Disk Sentinel), then the LOG will show this change - which may happen months or even years after that.

Does this message appear only if there is a spin up problem recently, or is it the kind of thing that will always show up in the Overview after it happens the first time?

[smancuso]

Thanks for the information about how the log works. I am still uncertain about the general health status and the green box message in the Overview tab.

hdsentinel.JPG (39.19 KiB) Viewed 9995 times

So I connected this HD today. Does this message indicate

a) that the problem with the spin-up happened today,

OR

b)that it happened some time in the past, which caused the message to appear, and the message remains there going forward?

Sorry about the continued questions.

sam

[hdsentinel]

> So I connected this HD today. Does this message indicate
> a) that the problem with the spin-up happened today,

NO.

> b)that it happened some time in the past, which caused the message to appear, and the message remains there going forward?

YES, this is the case.

The hard disk counts errors/problems in its internal S.M.A.R.T. database during its lifetime, independently from the current OS and programs.
So Hard Disk Sentinel can detect and display such error counters even if they happened long before installation of Hard Disk Sentinel. But then we have no information about how and when these errors happened, so the log is empty. The log will contain new entries only if now (after Hard Disk Sentinel first met this hard disk) the error counter(s) will change and new problem(s) will be reported.

[smancuso]

This clears things up considerably. I understand better now how to use this software.

Thanks for all your help.

sam