cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

SMART questions especially "Unsafe Shutdown Count"

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I installed a new 510 series 120Gb SSD to my DH67GD in the last several days, and am alarmed to look at the SMART attributes via the SSD Toolbox, where it says ID C0 Unsafe Shutdown Count is 6. Six unsafe shutdowns? I have been babysitting this thing since birth, having installed W7 HP 64-bit from scratch, and I have yet to experience anything at all that would account for a number like this. No BSODs or power interruptions at all. What am I to think of this? I've in fact only shut the PC down completely a couple of times, the rest of the time it's been placed into S3 Sleep mode.

Anybody?

Another question: it was suggested in this thread /message/106050# 106050 http://communities.intel.com/message/106050# 106050 that SMART should be turned-OFF in BIOS, but then refers to a link where contradictory advice is given. For the DH67GD, with an SSD and the Toolbox, should I turn OFF SMART in BIOS?

14 REPLIES 14

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

koitsu wrote:

...when I built this system, I did in fact force the power off manually a few times, and a couple other times I used MS-DOS to do BIOS and SSD firmware upgrades and shut the system off abruptly afterwards. So basically all 9 times are legitimate.

I did read the Intel User Guide--but it doesn't suggest real-world reasons why "unsafe shutdowns" might accumulate. Had you simply stated (just) the above in Post # 2 you would have saved us both a lot of grief.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Because I get Email or find comments about this non-issue every month or two, I decided to make a Youtube video about it with a brand new Intel 510-series SSD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHcgitmP70w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHcgitmP70w

Keepin' it real like a sprayed snow tree...

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

>mine says I have 42 unsafe shutdown

I've searched High and Low and remain puzzled as to why Intel reports this, but doesn't explain "why" here or anywhere? It certainly is disconcerting to see isn't it...

I did turn-off SMART in BIOS and it seems not to have affected the Toolbox at all, so apparently the BIOS feature is something that only affects startup, as if it were doing a SMART check on boot and would report if a problem, but I can find no confirmation for this for my DH67GD.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

tomf wrote:

>mine says I have 42 unsafe shutdown

I've searched High and Low and remain puzzled as to why Intel reports this, but doesn't explain "why" here or anywhere? It certainly is disconcerting to see isn't it...

I did turn-off SMART in BIOS and it seems not to have affected the Toolbox at all, so apparently the BIOS feature is something that only affects startup, as if it were doing a SMART check on boot and would report if a problem, but I can find no confirmation for this for my DH67GD.

You're misunderstanding what the PC BIOS option does. It doesn't help that motherboard manufacturers incorrectly document what the feature does either, and that includes Dell. Furthermore, this BIOS option has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

The BIOS option, when enabled, causes the BIOS itself to query all attached hard disks and submit the ATA command relevant to getting back the "overall SMART health status" value (literally a "drive is OK" and "drive is bad" result); it does not monitor all attributes, it simply looks at the overall health status. If the drive returns a not-healthy status, the PC BIOS will pause/stop and inform you of this (indicating the drive may be bad, replace it, etc...). If the drive returns an OK/healthy status, the PC BIOS will continue normally.

When the BIOS option is disabled, the BIOS does not perform a SMART health check at all. Disabling the option can slightly increase boot speed (maybe by 0.2 seconds AT MOST).

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

>You're misunderstanding what the PC BIOS option does. It doesn't help that motherboard manufacturers incorrectly document what the feature does either, and that includes Dell. Furthermore, this BIOS option has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

Number 1, I did say "apparently the BIOS feature is something that only affects startup" so I already figured this out. And btw it's MY thread, and it is entitled SMART questions! I'll ask whatever the heck I want to ask, thank-you-very-much.

>Would you like me to teach you how to read the above data correctly, or would you rather insist there's a problem that isn't there?

>Starting to get the picture?

I don't know what your underwear is all in a bunch about! I never "insisted there was a problem", all I asked was for someone to explain what C0 meant. And then I merely added "It's an Intel mobo w/Intel SSD" so Intel certainly oughta be able to explain exactly what it's about.

Dunno what your agenda is--nor do I care--but I'd still suggest to Intel that if they are going to expose this data to their end-users, they might consider expanding the explanation of same in their Help file.