Excessive Hi Fly Writes

[ct1478]

I just pre-cleared 4 Seagate ST4000VN000 drives with no problem,

however when I check the status of the drives using smartview in

Unmenu, I get an excessive amount of Hi Fly Writes.

 

Drive 1 213 errors with 92 power on hours.

Drive 2 285 errors with 90 power on hours.

Drive 3 202 errors with 92 power on hours.

Drive 4 471 errors with 91 power on hours.

 

The drives were pre-cleared in an array of 17

Seagate ST3000DM001's in a Norco 4224 case.

 

Anyone have any idea why I am getting this

many errors?

 

Is it possible the vibration in this case is causing

the problem?

[garycase]

Different manufacturers report certain SMART parameters in different ways.  You can safely ignore Seagate's High Fly Write counts ... the drives are almost certainly fine.

 

They're not "errors" by the way ... it's just counting the number of high fly writes.  This is an informational SMART parameter -- not one that will cause failure of SMART or that indicates any imminent failure.  Many manufacturers don't bother to report this parameter, since it's essentially meaningless with regards to drive health.

 

 

 

 

[ct1478]

Thanks for the info.

 

Anyone else have this drive, and can check the Hi Fly Writes on your drives?

[garycase]

I don't have any current 3-4TB Seagates, but have installed about 15 for others, and ALL of them had fairly large high fly write counts.    These were all the NAS units, but the concept is the same.

 

[ct1478]

I am still having a problem accepting the concept these Hi Fly Writes are not a problem.

 

If I understand it correctly, these writes are times when the heads are too far away

from the platters to write the data safely, and the drive has to wait till they come back

in the safe zone to write the data.

 

As fast as these writes are aculmating I would think this would slow the drive down

as well as leaving doubt about the design of the drive. If Seagate can design a cheaper

drive (ST3000DM001) that does not exhibt this sympton, why did they not put it on

this drive? Also I wonder why Seagate put this parameter in smart to start with?

 

I did an expermient with one of the drive I have, I put it in a Windows system on a piece

of foam to reduce the vibration and copied 500 MB of data to it, the Hi Writes increased

by 11, so I don't think the vibration is affecting it that much, but the fact remains the Hi

Fly Writes are increasing by a large amount.

 

Maybe I am to critical on this, but I still think this might be a problem down the road.

[garycase]

If you're worried about them, just RMA them ... but if you get the same model back the new drives will also show the same results.    Or just replace them with WD Reds.

 

[dirtysanchez]

If you're worried about them, just RMA them ... but if you get the same model back the new drives will also show the same results.

 

And if you RMA them, you're likely to get refurbished units as replacements.

[ct1478]

Thanks guys.

 

I have RMA some ES Seagate drives in the past and did indeed receive

refurbished drives that lasted a whole 2 mo, guess where they went?

 

I might just try the WD Red's, I have not been a real fan of WD in the past, but I guess

I could give then another chance.