Smart isn't so Smart

sumyungai

Senior member
Dec 28, 2005
344
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Smart is supposed to tell me if my drive is about to go bad. However, I just had a Seagate 300 gig drive go out on me. I decided to use Everest to check the Smart status on the offending drive and it checked out ok but a chkdsk /f would freeze. With the offending drive connected, I had total system instability if I transfer files to and from it. After I removed it, everything went back to normal. Lesson of the day, Smart=gimmick.
 

Spike

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2001
6,770
1
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Originally posted by: sumyungai
Smart is supposed to tell me if my drive is about to go bad. However, I just had a Seagate 300 gig drive go out on me. I decided to use Everest to check the Smart status on the offending drive and it checked out ok but a chkdsk /f would freeze. With the offending drive connected, I had total system instability if I transfer files to and from it. After I removed it, everything went back to normal. Lesson of the day, Smart=gimmick.


I had SMART warn me about a failing HDD is my sister-in-laws Dell laptop. I backed up the drive and as I was testing the HDD it finally failed. In our case SMART=Savior as we got all her files backed up before the crash. Sorry it did not work for you.

-spike
 

Looney

Lifer
Jun 13, 2000
21,938
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SMART only checks certain common conditions of failing drives. It's not 100% foolproof. And yes, it's warned me on a couple of failing drives.
 

Spike

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2001
6,770
1
81
Originally posted by: sumyungai
I guess its just my bad luck. I just lost 280 gigs of unbacked up data (my fault). :(

Thats what alot of it amounts too, bad luck. After the incident with the laptop I got a seagate 160gb, popped it into an external drive, and use that now for all my important stuff. Anything I can't fit on that I figure is not really that important and I can always burn it on DVD if I need to.

Sorry about the lost data :(

-spike
 

sumyungai

Senior member
Dec 28, 2005
344
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Originally posted by: Spike
Originally posted by: sumyungai
I guess its just my bad luck. I just lost 280 gigs of unbacked up data (my fault). :(

Thats what alot of it amounts too, bad luck. After the incident with the laptop I got a seagate 160gb, popped it into an external drive, and use that now for all my important stuff. Anything I can't fit on that I figure is not really that important and I can always burn it on DVD if I need to.

Sorry about the lost data :(

-spike

Yeah well, live and learn. :) After I bought all my drives I began to read a lot of bad reviews on Seagates 300 gig 7200.8 drive, saying they have high failure rates. I'm beginning to worry now.
 

Spike

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2001
6,770
1
81
Originally posted by: sumyungai

Yeah well, live and learn. :) After I bought all my drives I began to read a lot of bad reviews on Seagates 300 gig 7200.8 drive, saying they have high failure rates. I'm beginning to worry now.

That is actually what concerned me. I have always been a seagate fan but I bought my Hitachi T7k250 after I learned about the issues with the 7200.8 line. The Hitachi is my main program drive and I will get a gaming drive later (when I have more $$) and at that point I will check out the latest Seagate to see if they are getting better reviews.

-spike