What does "ECC Bytes" under Storage->ATA means?

[Obi-Wan]

Hello.

 

This is my first post, so again - Hello to everyone

 

What does the "ECC Bytes" position under Storage -> ATA means? Aren't the HDDs suppose to have the same amount of ECC bytes (50 on 512b and 100 on 4K Advanced Format disks)?

 

I have HDDs from few manufacturers and:

 

Seagate ST3120026A  - ECC Bytes: 4

Seagate ST3250410AS - ECC Bytes: 4

Hitachi 160GB 2,5" SATA - ECC Bytes: 4

WD WD6400AAKS - ECC Bytes: 50 (this looks like I thought all disks should looks)

 

and the best:

Toshiba MQ-01ABD100 (from ADATA CH11 External USB3 drive - the drive is AF 4K) - ECC Bytes: 0 (yes - zero! - Tried to read it via USB and via SATA)

 

What does it means?

[Fiery]

It seems the latest ATA specification (and a few preceding revisions as well) treats the ECC bytes register field as obsolete.  We'll remove that information from AIDA64 to avoid confusion.


Thanks,

Fiery

[Obi-Wan]

Hello.

Thanks for your reply. Maybe it is worth to delete that information only when the latest ATA spec is found on a disk? Or maybe only when that value is zero?

[Fiery]

The ATA spec treats the ECC bytes field obsolete for over 15 years now, so it's not since the previous spec release

[Obi-Wan]

Ahahah I thought that the change was made on the latest ATA8 spec But it is interesting, that many new HDDs report this value anyway, but not all of them. Thanx for reply, glad I could help in AIDA64 evolution.