hey Folks -

Does anyone know anything more about this particular S.M.A.R.T. attribute, other than this:

(193) Load/Unload Cycle Count - Number of cycles into the Landing Zone position (where the magnetic heads land and take off from the hard drive's platter)

That's all I can find on the web about it. What I need to know is how critical this attribute actually is. The number has continued to drop over the past few weeks - about 1 point every 6 or 7 days - and I'm wondering if this is a sign of hard disk failure.

I've been getting this reading from a fairly new internal HDD - a Toshiba 80G, installed into a Toshiba laptop, in the bay that's provided on the case, about 6 months ago. It's not loaded down with data - there's more than 50% free space on it.

No other problems - if this is a problem - and nothing else out of the ordinary...

Anyway, if you know where I can read more about this attribute - hopefully something in-depth - I'd be very grateful.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post!

-jackstraw

well, the original post has been up almost a week, and no replies, so I guess it isn't very easy to find some answers about the S.M.A.R.T. data.

It's great that there are so many (free, even) little apps out there that'll give you S.M.A.R.T. data about your hard disk drives, but w/out some way to interpret it, it isn't all that valuable.

I did find a whole long treatise from Hitachi about ramp loading vs. CSS (contact start-stop), but it didn't go into S.M.A.R.T. at all.

anyway, thanks for reading...

I get the same issue.
Since the last month the number dropped 1 each day from 92 to about 78...

Did you find an answer? Is it a problem in the HD?

T♦hanks!

Here are some things I found:

http://www.almico.com/sfarticle.php?id=2
http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=micromat&Number=649566&page=&view=&sb=&o=

Hope it helps.

"Since the last month the number dropped 1 each day from 92 to about 78"

I've been in the 40s for most of the last few months - been 41 for awhile now. One of my other HDDs has been at 60 for 4 years.

The one thing I did find out for sure - and thanks for the links - is that the numbers mean vastly different things between manufacturers.

The best advice I could find regarding performance, likelihood of failure, etc. was to check with the manufacturer of the disk.

I tried Toshiba's site a few months back and came up with nothing.

Good luck! I'm still searching...

well, after going through both links - thanks again, SmartFan is a great utility program by the way - I think I can safely say that Load/Unload Cycle Count is not directly related to the health of a drive. I understand this because its attribute is set to Zero.

"0 means that the attribute the threshold is associated to should be considered only informational and that it has no direct influence over reliability" (from the SpeedFan article)

Of course, when you think about what Load/Unload Cycle Count is, it's hard to think it has nothing to do with the eventual failure of my HDD. Common sense says the more times the heads "park and unpark" - ramp or no ramp - the closer that disk is to the end of its life.

Unless maybe that particular failure could be repaired...? Anybody ever bring the read/write heads back from death?

I think that the harddiscs have a finite number load/unload cycles, but who can say exactly what number or when the drive will fail. I would say, from what I read (I am learning too), that if the number goes below the threshold for any attribute then the likelyhood of drive failure is greatly increased.

Some attributes are more likely to be indicative of imminent drive failure than others and I think that I saw that the #193 attribute (most of them appear to be numbered the same anyway) is a meaure of old age and not a predictor of drive failure.

Having said that, I would not let it go too long. I also read that the best time to replace a failing drive is the day before it dies!

It was interesting reading. I always wondered what those numbers meant.

Thanks.

Thanks for the info.

Well, I will wait until it reaches 40ish.... right now at 65

Thanks again for the links and shared experience!

You're welcome and I hope it helped. Thank you, too.