HDD Power Off Retract Count going up regularly

[jkp]

Hi,

I recently installed FreeNAS 9.10 on a HP MicroServer Gen 8 with two Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 1TB disks in a ZFS mirror configuration.

All is fine except that in the SMART data I can see that the emergency retract count is going up for both drives each time I turn the server on/off even though I always the GUI shutdown command. Given that the server is used lightly and turned off when not in use, I am a bit concerned for the long term implications this could have. But I'm not sure FreeNAS is the culprit here because the count was already at 10 by the time I first installed it and ran smartctl.

The Microserver has a horribly labourious boot sequence that takes several minutes so I don't know if it could be power cycling them at that point for some unknown reason.

Has anybody run into this issue before?

SmartCtl Output:


1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 100 100 006 Pre-fail Always - 476504
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 097 097 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 26
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 100 253 030 Pre-fail Always - 2570
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 2
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 26
183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 100 100 099 Old_age Always - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 0 0
189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 071 067 045 Old_age Always - 29 (Min/Max 25/29)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 15
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 48
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 029 040 000 Old_age Always - 29 (0 17 0 0 0)
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 2h+26m+29.974s
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 1365820
242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 2226822


Thanks,

James

 

[Mirfster]

That can mostly be ignored:

Reference: https://kb.acronis.com/content/9127

 

[jkp]

That can mostly be ignored:

Reference: https://kb.acronis.com/content/9127

Whilst it may not be considered a big deal, it is still something that should not be happening when everything is working correctly and I am curious to know what could be causing it. I have never experienced this problem on any other of the dozens of computers I have used (I started to check SMART data almost religiously after I had a Hitachi drive go bad many years ago)

 

[jkp]

Actually I guess @Mirfster is right, it seems like on Seagate models this is not necessarily related to emergency head retracts. I'm more used to using Western Digital drives where "Power Off Retract Count" is specifically an indicator of an unsafe shutdown (e.g. the PC I'm typing on has only 4 such events in nearly 6000 hours). The problem is the drives are so quiet I can't hear whether they park before powering off or not.

 

[DrKK]

So I just checked about a dozen Western Digitals in my house. All of them show #192 at about 30-50% of #12. This is various OS's, the disks have never been powered down ungracefully, etc.

Those numbers seem consistent with yours.

My disks are all 3+ years old and never have had a single bit out of place, ever.

I think you're fine.

 

[Mirfster]

Hey whaddaya know? See, that is I why I post so much. Odds are in my favor, post enough and eventually I will be right on something... ;)

 

[DrKK]

Hey whaddaya know? See, that is I why I post so much. Odds are in my favor, post enough and eventually I will be right on something... ;)

For a second there I thought you were replying to me, Mirfster. lol.