Solidigm™ (formerly Intel®) SSDs: Important SMART attribute indicators

This article is to educate Solidigm SSD customers on how to determine the health of their SSDs using a subset of important SMART or similar attributes.

Summary

This article is to help customers of both Solidigm™ (formerly Intel®) SSDs determine the health of their SSDs using a subset of important SMART attributes.

Note

Some SMART attributes may be product and vendor specific

General information about SMART technology is available on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

SATA SSD Example

The SMART readout includes:

Normalized values
Raw values,
Threshold values
Other values

Note that in some cases, the Raw value of the attribute matters and in other attribute cases, the Normalized value of the attribute matters. Also note that only pre-fail attributes have a Threshold value, and the attribute value can go from good to bad in either direction: increasing or decreasing in number/value. In the example below, the Available Reserved Space attribute value for a good SSD is anywhere between 11 and 100 (10 and below is bad), whereas BBh is best at raw value of 0. Some attributes such as AFh works differently. Please ignore the rest of the information in Status/Threshold/Worst.

The table below shows the most important attributes on SATA SSDs, with corresponding examples Look-at values, Threshold values, and also acceptable condition and best case conditions. If the attributes are within acceptable conditions, the SSD is in a good state. If they're outside of acceptable conditions, contact Solidigm™ Customer Support.

Important Attributes	Attribute Name	Look-at Value	Threshold	Acceptable Condition
B8h	End-to-end error detection count	Normalized	90	91-100 (100=best)
E8h / AA (Duplicate attribute)	Available reserved space	Normalized	10	11-100 (100=best)
E9h	Media wearout indicator	Normalized	1	2-100 (100=best)
AFh	Power loss protection failure	Normalized	Fail=below 10	Shows huge number
05h	Reallocated sector count	Raw	1000	0-999 (0=best)

The example below shows a good SSD. The look-at values per important attribute are highlight in yellow, which are all in a best-case state.

NVMe* SSD Example

These attributes can be analyzed in the example below. Some of the most important ones are highlighted in yellow. The Critical Warnings indicator is actually the most important one, as it captures all other important indicators. Unsafe Shutdowns should make sense for the SSD users, or there could be an issue with the OS driver (not sending safe shutdown signals).

Temperature indicators indicate if cooling is sufficient.

Percentage Used indicates media wear, and a value between 1 and 99 is acceptable, whereas 100 is not.

Fewer Media Errors indicate better SSD health. If any of the attributes mentioned here cross acceptable threshold limits, they result in Critical Warnings.

If you see any Critical Warnings, contact Solidigm™ Customer Support:

Solidigm™ (formerly Intel®) SSDs support SMART attributes listed in the product specification and implementation is aligned with https://nvmexpress.org/ standards.

Questions?

Contact Solidigm™ Customer Support.

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