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Disk health is excellent but Cycle Count is 1,350,000 ?

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XPcentric

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 16, 2008
271
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After using DiskRadar I didn't miss the issue of Cycle Count (Worst value = 1) although overall disk health shows to be excellent.
All I want to know is if I should replace the HDD urgently, or if its not a problem for the next 6 months ?
 
XPcentric said:
All I want to know is if I should replace the HDD urgently, or if its not a problem for the next 6 months ?
Click to expand...

Is the hdd in question a WD Caviar Green? I usually see much higher than ordinary numbers for cycle count in those units.

I would replace it with a different make of hard drive, but in the very least, I hope you have complete backups of the data...
 
matreya said:
Is the hdd in question a WD Caviar Green? I usually see much higher than ordinary numbers for cycle count in those units.

I would replace it with a different make of hard drive, but in the very least, I hope you have complete backups of the data...
Click to expand...

Its the original HDD from late 2008 Aluminium Macbook, I guess Toshiba. I will surely replace it, the question to answer if its an urgent problem, like immediately, or if I could easily wait a couple of months.

The company that makes the software has nothing to do with Disk Cycle Count- if someone could provide me with a command to run in terminal to find the same information that would be useful.
 
XPcentric said:
After using DiskRadar I didn't miss the issue of Cycle Count (Worst value = 1) although overall disk health shows to be excellent.
All I want to know is if I should replace the HDD urgently, or if its not a problem for the next 6 months ?
Click to expand...

Most HDDs are rated for a load cycle count of 300,000 to 600,000 depending on the brand etc. All this means is yours has lasted much longer than what the drive is rated for. Kind of like if most car engines fall apart in 150,000 miles, but yours is still running fine at 200,000. It might last another 50,000 miles or it might not... no way to know.

I would not worry about replacing it tomorrow morning or anything, but if it would be a real hassle for you to deal with a dead drive, it might be better to pop a new drive in there soon just to be safe. Hopefully you have a backup.

XPcentric said:
Its the original HDD from late 2008 Aluminium Macbook, I guess Toshiba. I will surely replace it, the question to answer if its an urgent problem, like immediately, or if I could easily wait a couple of months.

The company that makes the software has nothing to do with Disk Cycle Count- if someone could provide me with a command to run in terminal to find the same information that would be useful.
Click to expand...

I am not aware of a Terminal command to get the load cycle count, but there are tons of SMART utilities than can get that LCC reading for you if you want to double check. Looks like you could use the demo of this one to get the LCC info.
 
A terminal command that can do it is smartctl part of the smartmontools package. The command is "smartctl -a /dev/disk0". That command is not a part of the standard Mac OS X installation and you must locate and install it for the command to work.
 
Thank you Weaselboy and Intell, your confirmation is also what I've read.
Nice analogy with the cars, but I guess that explains why my Macbook runs just like an old car, with the fire ball spinning for many minor tasks.
 
Even though it has a higher than rated cycle count, doesn't mean you won't be able to get many more years out of it.
 
XPcentric said:
Thank you Weaselboy and Intell, your confirmation is also what I've read.
Nice analogy with the cars, but I guess that explains why my Macbook runs just like an old car, with the fire ball spinning for many minor tasks.
Click to expand...

Sounds like what you really need to do is upgrade to an SSD :)
 
matreya said:
Sounds like what you really need to do is upgrade to an SSD :)
Click to expand...

thats exactly what I planned, but I didnt want to mix the topic of SSD here.
However, I will make my intent public, I never know what news I can get:
- it will be a cheaper 120GB, although I heard different views about that. Some say that the 250GB is of better quality, but some benchmarks didnt prove much difference between the two.

Edit: I also tried Smart Utility that Weaselboy suggested, and my internal HDD has many other Worst Values, other than Cycle Count.
 
SMART is not a very accurate way to go about checking a drive. It's a rough guess at best, but can be completely inaccurate about the drive's overall health.
 
XPcentric said:
thats exactly what I planned, but I didnt want to mix the topic of SSD here.
However, I will make my intent public, I never know what news I can get:
- it will be a cheaper 120GB, although I heard different views about that. Some say that the 250GB is of better quality, but some benchmarks didnt prove much difference between the two.

Edit: I also tried Smart Utility that Weaselboy suggested, and my internal HDD has many other Worst Values, other than Cycle Count.
Click to expand...

Your 2008 Mac uses an older (and much slower) SATA I drive interface and is not going to come even close to being able to utilize the top speeds of even the lowliest SSD, so I would not be worried to much about SSD performance. Just get an SSD that will be reliable at a good price. No point in paying more for a faster speed you won't be able to utilize anyway.

Because of the way the NAND chips are laid out, a 256GB drive will sustain more write cycles than 128GB drive, but unless you are a very heavy user either will likely last you longer than that Macbook will. There is a pretty good article here about it.

Intell said:
SMART is not a very accurate way to go about checking a drive. It's a rough guess at best, but can be completely inaccurate about the drive's overall health.
Click to expand...

I agree SMART is imperfect, but in some cases it can be a very good indicator of impending drive failure. For example, if you have a drive that is starting to report a lot of reallocated sectors, it is time to start looking for a new drive.

brand said:
Since it is their software that is pulling that value from the drive then they will know what it means and more about it.
Click to expand...

The OP's question was related to "load cycle count" and that is a well documented SMART attribute.
 
brand said:
You are correct. It is a documented SMART attribute, one that he was reading by using the program DiskRadar.
Click to expand...

I kind of feel like we were able to help the guy out a bit here. Too bad you don't think it is worth the trouble.
 
brand said:
To me it makes more sense contacting the developer of the software rather than a bunch of random people on some forum.
Click to expand...

Then again, this is just the opinion of some random person on a forum. :p

Weaselboy said:
I kind of feel like we were able to help the guy out a bit here. Too bad you don't think it is worth the trouble.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more. You're likely to get far better advice in here.
 
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