Smartmontools and 3TB Hard Drives

Question

I have many 3TB drives, and on all of them they show the following right from the get go via Smartmon tools.

Edit: Using Debian 6.0/7.0

Now normally i use the Seek_Error_Rate or CRC_ERROR_COUNT to tell when a hard drive needs replacing, however with these, there isn't any way to tell (from what I can tell).

So my question is, what is the best way to tell when a 3TB+ drive is failing and are there any other tools or maybe some automation I can setup to let me know at the earliest, one could be failing (I have 15+ in use)

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   108   099   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       17853736
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   093   092   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       12
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   088   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       797480237
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       8700
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       12
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
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       2
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   070   062   045    Old_age   Always       -       30 (Lifetime Min/Max 29/31)
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       -       10
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       82
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   030   040   000    Old_age   Always       -       30 (0 23 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       -       1
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       269942989529561
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       155082501012819
242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       221731329841837

Answer 1

I use Reallocated_Sector_Ct to see when disks are dying. This shows the number of blocks that the disk firmware decided could no longer be used, and a non-zero number indicates the surface has become damaged and data loss has occurred, and once it becomes non-zero it tends to increase. Spin_Retry_Count is also useful, a non-zero number means the drive has had to retry spinning up, possibly indicating an imminent failure of the drive to start at all. CRC_ERROR_COUNT is related to failures when communicating with the disk controller, not errors internal to the drive, and may indicate problems with the cable or controller rather than the disk. Seek_Error_Rate can't be reliably interpreted.

As for monitoring the disks, Smartmontools comes with smartd, a daemon that can run in the background and query the SMART data periodically.