Pulsar XT.2 SAS Product Manual, Rev. B
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the static electricity from the drive carrier prior to inserting it into the system.
6.3.4
S.M.A.R.T.
S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. This technology is intended
to recognize conditions that indicate imminent drive failure and is designed to provide sufficient warning of a
failure to allow administrators to back up the data before an actual failure occurs.
Note.
The drive’s firmware monitors specific attributes for degradation over time but can’t predict instanta-
neous drive failures.
Each monitored attribute has been selected to monitor a specific set of failure conditions in the operating per-
formance of the drive and the thresholds are optimized to minimize “false” and “failed” predictions.
Controlling S.M.A.R.T.
The operating mode of S.M.A.R.T. is controlled by the DEXCPT and PERF bits on the Informational Exceptions
Control mode page (1Ch). Use the DEXCPT bit to enable or disable the S.M.A.R.T. feature. Setting the DEX-
CPT bit disables all S.M.A.R.T. functions. When enabled, S.M.A.R.T. collects on-line data as the drive performs
normal read and write operations. When the PERF bit is set, the drive is considered to be in “On-line Mode
Only” and will not perform off-line functions.
An application can measure off-line attributes and force the drive to save the data by using the REZERO UNIT
command. Forcing S.M.A.R.T. resets the timer so that the next scheduled interrupt is in one hour.
An application can interrogate the drive through the host to determine the time remaining before the next
scheduled measurement and data logging process occurs. To accomplish this, issue a LOG SENSE command
to log page 0x3E. This allows applications to control when S.M.A.R.T. interruptions occur. Forcing S.M.A.R.T.
with the REZERO UNIT command resets the timer.
Performance impact
S.M.A.R.T. attribute data is saved to the media so that the events that caused a predictive failure can be recre-
ated. The drive measures and saves parameters once every hour subject to an idle period on the drive inter-
faces. The process of measuring off-line attribute data and saving data to the media is interruptible. The
maximum on-line only processing delay is summarized below
Reporting control
Reporting is controlled by the MRIE bits in the Informational Exceptions Control mode page (1Ch). Subject to
the reporting method. For example, if the MRIE is set to one, the firmware will issue to the host an 01-5D00
sense code. The FRU field contains the type of predictive failure that occurred. The error code is preserved
through bus resets and power cycles.
Determining rate
S.M.A.R.T. monitors the rate at which errors occur and signals a predictive failure if the rate of degraded errors
increases to an unacceptable level. To determine rate, error events are logged and compared to the number of
total operations for a given attribute. The interval defines the number of operations over which to measure the
rate. The counter that keeps track of the current number of operations is referred to as the Interval Counter.
S.M.A.R.T. measures error rates. All errors for each monitored attribute are recorded. A counter keeps track of
the number of errors for the current interval. This counter is referred to as the Failure Counter.
Maximum processing delay
Fully-enabled delay
DEXCPT = 0
S.M.A.R.T. delay times
75 ms
