Power-Off_Retract_Count

[ocintron]

Greetings,

I have three 24 TB Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC590 hard drives. I’m running them in a Windows server as a spanned data volume. The drives operate normal and I’m not noticing any issues. However, I run a weekly automated batch job that executes the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics on all drives. I run this to stay aware of the current health of the drives. There are two outputs from the diagnostics that are concerning to me, and I was hoping for guidance before I open a tech support case with Western Digital.

The below is the output from the latest diagnostics from one of the drives. You will notice line item 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count counting 1109 events. This drive has current lifetime of 5221 hours.

Google search said there are three possible reasons for this:

1. Bad or unstable power source.
2. Power saver setting in Windows.
3. Firmware issue.

I addressed # 1 by replacing the power supply with new 750-watt unit from reputable vendor Corsair. The Windows server is my personal box for archival purposes and sits mostly idle. It runs an Intel i3 10th gen CPU with 16-gig of RAM.

I addressed # 2 by switching to High Performance in power settings, with an idle timeout of 0 minutes if the server runs on UPS. 0 minutes means the drive is never allowed to power down.

I haven’t addressed # 3 as of yet.

Unfortunately, the counter continues to rise.

What could be causing the issue?

TIA

smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-2012r2] (AppVeyor)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: WDC WUH722624ALE6L4
Serial Number: XXXX
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000cca 425c08c33
Firmware Version: SWGNWJ20
User Capacity: 24,000,277,250,048 bytes [24.0 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Device is: Not in smartctl database
ATA Version is: ACS-5 (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is: SATA 3.5, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Wed Jun 10 05:31:09 2026 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
AAM feature is: Unavailable
APM feature is: Disabled
Rd look-ahead is: Enabled
Write cache is: Enabled
DSN feature is: Unavailable
ATA Security is: Disabled, frozen [SEC2]

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x80) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 101) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: (2576) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x003d) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAGS VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate PO-R-- 100 100 001 - 0
2 Throughput_Performance P-S— 149 149 054 - 46
3 Spin_Up_Time POS— 083 083 001 - 368 (Average 365)
4 Start_Stop_Count -O–C- 100 100 000 - 10
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO–CK 100 100 001 - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate PO-R-- 100 100 001 - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance P-S— 144 144 020 - 14
9 Power_On_Hours -O–C- 100 100 000 - 5221
10 Spin_Retry_Count PO–C- 100 100 001 - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count -O–CK 100 100 000 - 10
22 Helium_Level PO—K 100 100 025 - 6553700
71 Unknown_Attribute P----- 100 100 001 - 0
90 Unknown_Attribute P—CK 100 100 001 - 455266533888
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count -O–CK 100 100 000 - 1109
193 Load_Cycle_Count -O–C- 100 100 000 - 1109
194 Temperature_Celsius -O---- 056 056 000 - 39 (Min/Max 22/49)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count -O–CK 100 100 000 - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector -O—K 100 100 000 - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable —R-- 100 100 000 - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count -O-R-- 100 100 000 - 0
231 Temperature_Celsius -O–CK 100 100 000 - 0
||||||_ K auto-keep
|||||__ C event count
||||__ R error rate
|||__ S speed/performance
||__ O updated online
|______ P prefailure warning

[ocintron]

Per WD support chat, the behavior is normal.

I set Windows never to sleep the drives, but the drive firmware still spins it down.

I’ve had very good luck with the Ultrastar drives and they’re all I’ve ever used for my data. I ran SMART utility for years to keep track of drive lifetime but this is the first time I’ve looked closer into other counters.

I hope this is nothing to worry about.

Anywho. Cheers.

[Vegan]

I would not sweat as Ultrastar disks are well suited to more demanding applications. I have several such disks in my shop.

I do not use spanned volumes much anymore except in RAID server boxes on the LAN. The only reason is that while Windows can do this, NTFS is rather stretched.

I use very large capacity disks but I use JBOD these days and make redundant copies of important files so in the event of a failure I an safe.

[ocintron]

I’ve bought Ultrastar drives for a long time now. Their reliability is unmatched, so much that I’ve never bothered looking close at S.M.A.R.T. logs except for the Power On Hours. This way I can plan around drive replacements usually around 5-year mark.

I have three sets of Ultrastar drives. One set runs 24/7 for my always-on file archive server. The other two sets run on a second file archive server that I only power on and use for backing up my 24/7 file archive. Each drive set is configured as a unique spanned volume.

I realize things can go wrong with spanned volume sets. Considering these drives now cost upwards of $1,200 USD each, I think the risk is acceptable. I’ve done it this way for decades now.

[Vegan]

I look at all disk report values only to get a handle on what the disks experiences over the years. Some of my disks are very old but still work. 30,000 power on hours is no stranger in my studio.