I have a mess going

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

(e-mail address removed) says... []

Basically, it's leading me round and round in circles. I'm never
reaching a page where it asks for the above.

[]
I'll email you a link to a copy downloaded recently.

With Philip's help, I now have Acronis Drive Monitor 1.0.0.566. Points
I've observed already:

o Although it says No backup software detected, the line below says No
Acronis backup software is detected on your computer - i. e. it's fairly
clear to me that it's only looking for Acronis backup software, which
seems perfectly reasonable.

o Under Options, I can choose Unit of temperature (though only C or F!).

o It says my disk health is 27%; I hope it's wrong!

 

[Char Jackson]

With Philip's help, I now have Acronis Drive Monitor 1.0.0.566. Points
I've observed already:

o Under Options, I can choose Unit of temperature (though only C or F!).

Hmm, you're right, of course. So while it apparently defaults to your
locale settings, it can be changed, as long as you can live with
'only' C or F. ;-)

o It says my disk health is 27%; I hope it's wrong!

That ain't good! What's up with that?

 

[Char Jackson]

[snip]

However, I've also chosen to set the temperature alert higher
than the default for a small form factor PC which routinely reached 47C
but no higher (yes, I realise my copy is in Celcius - someone was
saying theirs was only Farenheit?).

It's F here, probably using my region settings? Are you in C land?

London England. I don't see an option to choose, so it's probably
picking up on locale.

See J.P.'s post where he discovered the F/C selector under Options.

[snip]

I don't see percentages in ADM, but for the virtual drive it was
basically complaining that it couldn't monitor it properly.
Temperature was listed as Not Available, and the SMART tab was blank.

That really isn't working for you! I've seen one or two disks which ADM
couldn't 'get', and this sounds like another. Scrap it, it isn't doing
anything for you!

It works properly on my 6 physical drives. It's the big virtual drive
(the sum of 5 drives) that it didn't like, so I just disabled
monitoring on the virtual drive. I haven't given up on it yet.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

On 2/24/2012, Philip Herlihy posted: [snip]

If you look at the reader comments, it's more than one person's
opinion...

I had some problems with Acronis a few years back, in particular an
installation that rendered my computer unbootable (but luckily for me,
Windows recovered it OK). I switched to Macrium, but lately I have come
to feel that EaseUS Todo is better, so I might switch yet again.
Acronis True Image is not the same as Acronis Drive Monitor, which is
what I was talking about. I've had very few problems with True Image,
but I've heard that some people have. I've also tried recently the
equivalent from Paragon "Hard Disk Manager" and that seems very good,
with a few useful extra features. However, with a disk that was a real
challenge, both threw similar errors. I've heard a lot of people say
good things about Macrium, but True Image is good enough for me, and I
use it regularly.

I was trying to point out how I got my current opinion of Acronis the
company. Nowhere did I say that I thought that True Image == Drive
Monitor.

... but it did rather sound like you didn't appreciate the difference,
which is unlikely given your long record of intelligent and useful
posts. Certainly didn't meant to give offence.

After a remark like your latest, how could I possibly continue to take
offense?

And as you hint, my remark about "Acronis" wasn't exactly unambiguous,
now that I think about it...

 

[Philip Herlihy]

(e-mail address removed) says... []

Basically, it's leading me round and round in circles. I'm never
reaching a page where it asks for the above.

[]
I'll email you a link to a copy downloaded recently.

With Philip's help, I now have Acronis Drive Monitor 1.0.0.566. Points
I've observed already:

o Although it says No backup software detected, the line below says No
Acronis backup software is detected on your computer - i. e. it's fairly
clear to me that it's only looking for Acronis backup software, which
seems perfectly reasonable.

o Under Options, I can choose Unit of temperature (though only C or F!).

o It says my disk health is 27%; I hope it's wrong!

Yikes! Data recovery NOW!

Look at the SMART information and see why it thinks this.

 

[Paul]

[snip]

However, I've also chosen to set the temperature alert higher
than the default for a small form factor PC which routinely reached 47C
but no higher (yes, I realise my copy is in Celcius - someone was
saying theirs was only Farenheit?).
It's F here, probably using my region settings? Are you in C land?

London England. I don't see an option to choose, so it's probably
picking up on locale.

See J.P.'s post where he discovered the F/C selector under Options.

[snip]

What score (%) it it giving the disk?
I don't see percentages in ADM, but for the virtual drive it was
basically complaining that it couldn't monitor it properly.
Temperature was listed as Not Available, and the SMART tab was blank.

That really isn't working for you! I've seen one or two disks which ADM
couldn't 'get', and this sounds like another. Scrap it, it isn't doing
anything for you!

It works properly on my 6 physical drives. It's the big virtual drive
(the sum of 5 drives) that it didn't like, so I just disabled
monitoring on the virtual drive. I haven't given up on it yet.

A virtual drive would need "SMART Passthru". I'm not finding much
right now on the topic. There used to be an article on SMART,
which mentioned it, but I can't find the article now.

http://www.overclock.net/t/883148/p5q-ich10r-s-m-a-r-t-passthru

Basically, you need an out-of-band way to get to the SMART stats.
Normally, tools know they should send commands on the IDE or SATA
bus, and try and talk to a drive directly. In cases where there isn't
a mapping between a logical volume and a single physical device, the
SMART data may need to be made visible in a driver control panel,
or "special vendor tool". All the other tools (Including the Acronis
SMART tool), would end up "sucking it", and get no data. Only the
vendor tool would have the data.

In cases where the interface/driver is "SCSI like", sometimes
a means is needed there too, to pass down the command for SMART.
There might not be any CDB (command/data block) coding, for a SMART command.

The odds are not good, of getting what you need, if SMART doesn't
immediately show up.

Paul

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:27:59 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"


That ain't good! What's up with that?

I've had absolutely no _symptoms_ of imminent failure. But I'm getting
the manufacturer's check tool to be sure - at least I think I am;
Samsung redirected to Seagate whose site implies Samsung and Seagate are
combined (at least for the sake of discs), but the Seagate tool says
it's for Seagate and Maxtor only - no mention of Samsung. I'll report
back when I've run that (seems to need .net 4, which took absolute ages,
and wants a reboot I haven't done yet).

It (ADM) says:
o Temperature 44°C (above 42°C);
o Reallocated sectors (raw 56, value 94, threshold 10);
o Spin retries (raw 5, value 100, threshold 51).
Everything else in the SMART is fine. I _suspect_ it's misinterpreting
the SMART data; however, I will run the Seagate tool.

It says Power on time: 614 day(s); is that the cumulative time it's been
powered since new? (160G drive, in Samsung netbook, which I've had 3-5
years, so sounds plausible.)

 

[Philip Herlihy]

I've had absolutely no _symptoms_ of imminent failure. But I'm getting
the manufacturer's check tool to be sure - at least I think I am;
Samsung redirected to Seagate whose site implies Samsung and Seagate are
combined (at least for the sake of discs), but the Seagate tool says
it's for Seagate and Maxtor only - no mention of Samsung. I'll report
back when I've run that (seems to need .net 4, which took absolute ages,
and wants a reboot I haven't done yet).

It (ADM) says:
o Temperature 44°C (above 42°C);
o Reallocated sectors (raw 56, value 94, threshold 10);
o Spin retries (raw 5, value 100, threshold 51).
Everything else in the SMART is fine. I _suspect_ it's misinterpreting
the SMART data; however, I will run the Seagate tool.

It says Power on time: 614 day(s); is that the cumulative time it's been
powered since new? (160G drive, in Samsung netbook, which I've had 3-5
years, so sounds plausible.)

I'd figure that 44C isn't that significant some laptops run way hotter
than this - although that's not good. I can't interpret reallocated
sector numbers directly, which is one reason why ADM is useful. My
understanding (no expert) is that if you're seeing *any* reallocated
sectors then the disk has used up its "allowance" and is "in debt".

 

[Char Jackson]

I've had absolutely no _symptoms_ of imminent failure.

The whole idea behind sector reallocation is to make it transparent to
the end user, mapping unstable sectors to spare sectors, so you won't
necessarily see symptoms until you're past the point of data loss.

But I'm getting
the manufacturer's check tool to be sure - at least I think I am;
Samsung redirected to Seagate whose site implies Samsung and Seagate are
combined (at least for the sake of discs), but the Seagate tool says
it's for Seagate and Maxtor only - no mention of Samsung. I'll report
back when I've run that (seems to need .net 4, which took absolute ages,
and wants a reboot I haven't done yet).

Yeah, Samsung purchased Samsung's HD business in 2011. SeaTools should
be able to read the SMART info from the Samsung drive, but it may not
be able to do anything more. If you want to try a low level format,
which is what I just successfully did the other day, you'll want the
Samsung disk diagnostic tool, ESTool. It's available on the latest
copy of the Ultimate Boot CD, among other places.

It (ADM) says:
o Temperature 44°C (above 42°C);
o Reallocated sectors (raw 56, value 94, threshold 10);
o Spin retries (raw 5, value 100, threshold 51).
Everything else in the SMART is fine. I _suspect_ it's misinterpreting
the SMART data; however, I will run the Seagate tool.

I've never encountered a situation where I had reason to believe the
SMART data was wrong or interpreted incorrectly. What makes you think
it's happening in this case?

It says Power on time: 614 day(s); is that the cumulative time it's been
powered since new? (160G drive, in Samsung netbook, which I've had 3-5
years, so sounds plausible.)

I assume so.

 

[Char Jackson]

A virtual drive would need "SMART Passthru". I'm not finding much
right now on the topic. There used to be an article on SMART,
which mentioned it, but I can't find the article now.

http://www.overclock.net/t/883148/p5q-ich10r-s-m-a-r-t-passthru

Basically, you need an out-of-band way to get to the SMART stats.
Normally, tools know they should send commands on the IDE or SATA
bus, and try and talk to a drive directly. In cases where there isn't
a mapping between a logical volume and a single physical device, the
SMART data may need to be made visible in a driver control panel,
or "special vendor tool". All the other tools (Including the Acronis
SMART tool), would end up "sucking it", and get no data. Only the
vendor tool would have the data.

In cases where the interface/driver is "SCSI like", sometimes
a means is needed there too, to pass down the command for SMART.
There might not be any CDB (command/data block) coding, for a SMART command.

The odds are not good, of getting what you need, if SMART doesn't
immediately show up.

Thanks, Paul. Fortunately, the presence of the virtual drive in this
case doesn't prevent visibility to the SMART data on the underlying
physical drives, so I'm not missing anything.

Besides, with multiple drives pooled together into a big virtual
drive, it could get quite confusing to interpret SMART data. If an
issue were to show up there, I'd still have to drill down and find
which drive was responsible, so it's not really a shortcoming to just
monitor the physical drives directly.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

I've had absolutely no _symptoms_ of imminent failure.

The whole idea behind sector reallocation is to make it transparent to
the end user, mapping unstable sectors to spare sectors, so you won't
necessarily see symptoms until you're past the point of data loss.
True.

But I'm getting
the manufacturer's check tool to be sure - at least I think I am;
Samsung redirected to Seagate whose site implies Samsung and Seagate are
combined (at least for the sake of discs), but the Seagate tool says
it's for Seagate and Maxtor only - no mention of Samsung. I'll report
back when I've run that (seems to need .net 4, which took absolute ages,
and wants a reboot I haven't done yet).

Yeah, Samsung purchased Samsung's HD business in 2011. SeaTools should
(-:

be able to read the SMART info from the Samsung drive, but it may not []

It (ADM) says:
o Temperature 44°C (above 42°C);

As PH said, I wasn't worried about that - it dropped back below quickly
enough. (It's currently 41 according to Acronis.)

I've never encountered a situation where I had reason to believe the
SMART data was wrong or interpreted incorrectly. What makes you think
it's happening in this case?

Different manufacturers assign different ways of putting the values;
even Acronis' instructions do warn. Plus, I did get the feeling - from
the article I posted a link to earlier, and generally just my own
feeling - that this Acronis tool is erring on the side of caution.
That's the better way round (and it _is_ free).
[]
Anyway. I finally got the Seagate SeaTools for Windows installed (though
feel I've sold my soul to the devil by accepting .net 4, but that's by
the by). It does indeed recognise my drive as one it can work with. It
offers several tests: "S. M. A. R. T Check", "Short Drive Self Test",
"Drive Information" (that just gives what it says), "Short Generic",
"Long Generic", and "Advanced Tests". I've run them all except the last
("Long Generic" took about 61 minutes), and all have returned "Pass". So
I'm reassured - if the manufacturer's own tool says SMART is OK, _and_
passes it on two short and one long test, I think Acronis is needlessly
reporting a problem. I don't hold it against it - it is after all free,
and it did push me into getting the manufacturer's tool which I'd been
meaning to for ages anyway. (The Acronis took no longer than the
SeaTools "short", in fact more like the SeaTools SMART, so I suspect all
it does is read the SMART, but then interpret the raw data in a
different way to how Samsung/Seagate do. Maybe S/S use SMART in an
unusual manner.) Acronis does at least give me the figures (SeaTools
just says Pass), so I can at least use it to see if they change.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... his charming, bumbling best, a serial monogamist terrified of commitment,
who comes across as a sort of Bertie Wooster but with a measurable IQ. - Barry
Norman on Hugh Grant's persona in certain films, Radio Times 3-9 July 2010

 

[Philip Herlihy]

Acronis does at least give me the figures (SeaTools
just says Pass), so I can at least use it to see if they change.

I've found that a very useful approach. If ADM is uneasy about a disk,
but the figures (overall score) isn't getting worse, then I'll sometimes
persist with a disk but will check the figures regularly. Usually,
though, if the score is less than 100% I'll start thinking about
replacement.

 

[Char Jackson]

I installed it for evaluation and so far it's a mixed bag for me. I
know I can get around the 'no backups' warning by simply disabling
that function, but the other two categories, (disks and critical
events), are a bit more problematic. For the record, this category is
complaining that I have no recent backups. It's not complaining that I
don't have backup software installed because it sees Acronis True
Image.

I have hundreds of disk errors logged in Event Viewer because when a
drive starts going bad, it really goes bad, and Windows logs each and
every error it sees. That's well and good, but ADM (Acronis Drive
Monitor) is showing me that list of hundreds of critical errors, and
it seems like I either have to live with that list, disable critical
event warnings as a category, or right-click on each one individually
and choose to ignore it. Currently, the ADM icon is in my Tray with an
ugly red X on it.

The other category is disk warnings, and I had a problem there, too.
I'm running a drive pooling program called Drive Bender, which takes a
series of disks and makes them appear to Windows as a single (but much
bigger) disk. I have 5 physical disks in that pool, totaling 8.64TB of
storage. ADM shows no problems with any of the 5 physical drives, as
well as the physical drive that's not part of the pool, but it choked
and threw up a warning on the 8.64TB virtual drive created by Drive
Bender. I was able to disable monitoring on that virtual drive to
clear the warning in that category, but it was disconcerting for a
moment.

If I can find a way to acknowledge the Critical Event warnings all at
once rather than one at a time, then I'd probably keep the app for
now. As it is, though, it's showing the red X for things that I
consider to be resolved.

I think my experiment with Acronis Drive Monitor needs to come to an
end.

In addition to the fact that it complained about critical event log
entries and unavailable disk backups, both of which I worked around by
disabling monitoring of those items, and the fact that it wasn't able
to monitor my virtual drive, which I also got around by disabling
monitoring on just that one drive, I've now discovered another
problem.

On this machine, I have Acronis True Image v11 installed and
configured to do a full weekly backup of my Windows partition, as one
of several backup tasks. That part has worked well for months, but
recently the target for the backup has changed, which caused ATI to
throw an error. What should have happened next was that I would click
the ATI icon in the System Tray, ATI would open and display the error,
(in this case, Invalid path specified for backup), I would fix the
path, and away it would go. However, when clicking the ATI icon, ADM
opens instead! All would not be lost if ADM somehow allowed me to view
the error and correct it, but it only tells me that recent backups
haven't been completed, with no way to access the ATI GUI and correct
the path error.

I'm going back to Hard Disk Sentinel as my full time drive monitoring
utility, with HD Tune Pro as my on-demand secondary utility.