**update** S.M.A.R.T. hard drive - is it actually useful?

[docmanhattan]

I've been digging around trying to find a useful definition of what SMART actually entails and have yet to find anything. Can someone please point me to where I might find an explaination of this? Or better yet, explain to my dumb self what it is.

thanks.

edit:
ok, i see what it does. now i'm wondering if it is actually worth having enabled.

 

[Pariah]

Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology.

Basically it's a diagnostics scheme for trying to predict a hard drive failure before it happens giving you time to get the data off the drive before it's too late.

 

[docmanhattan]

<< Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology.

Basically it's a diagnostics scheme for trying to predict a hard drive failure before it happens giving you time to get the data off the drive before it's too late. >>


What does it base it's anaysis off of? More specifically, if it says that the status is Bad does that mean irrecoverably bad or can a re-format of the drive correct this?

 

[Athlex]

As docmanhattan said, it's basically a system to predict failures before they happen. I've heard bad things about it in practice though. Most manufacturers don't want to deal with too many RMAs so S.M.A.R.T. drives don't always tattle on themselves when they should.
I've had two SMART-capable Seagate drives fail on me and neither set off a red flag in the BIOS even when they were making horrible clicking and grinding sounds and couldn't boot.
FWIW...
/Atx

 

[docmanhattan]

<< As docmanhattan said, it's basically a system to predict failures before they happen. I've heard bad things about it in practice though. Most manufacturers don't want to deal with too many RMAs so S.M.A.R.T. drives don't always tattle on themselves when they should.
I've had two SMART-capable Seagate drives fail on me and neither set off a red flag in the BIOS even when they were making horrible clicking and grinding sounds and couldn't boot.
FWIW...
/Atx >>

interesting.

here's the thing, my WD 5400 60Gb is saying that it is status Bad and wouldn't boot into WinXP Pro. XP would crash on the boot screen and state that it couldn't mount the boot volume. ok. so in the recovery console I ran the CHKDSK to see if that would correct any HD errors. Well, XP boots now, however, the status of the drive is still listed as Bad. I'm wondering if I am going to have to re-format it or just suck it up and buy a new drive.

fortunately, everything is backed up. *whew*

 

[Sunner]

To me, SMART has been nothing but problems.

When it was relatively new, I had a comp with a SMART capable HD/mobo, and so I though thats really nice and turned it on.

It would shut down my computer once in a while, for some reason thinking my HD was about to crash or something.
Turned it off, and that computer is still doing fine with my parrents, including the HD which should according to SMART be long dead.

 

[Pariah]

"I've had two SMART-capable Seagate drives fail on me and neither set off a red flag in the BIOS even when they were making horrible clicking and grinding sounds and couldn't boot."

It is almost impossible to predict a crash consistently. Sort of like predicting an earthquake. SMART analyzes various aspects of the drive and attempts to predict a failure, it can't test everything, and there is no way for it to be completely accurate. I don't know exactly what is tested, but I have read over at PCGuide that the following are commonly used:

head flying height,# of remapped bad sectors,ECC use and error counts,spin-up time,temperature, and data throughput

If SMART is reporting your drive as bad, RMA it and get a replacement.

 

[Woody419]

"S.M.A.R.T. monitors hard drive operation to predict errors before data loss occurs."

I have S.M.A.R.T. work for me twice, once on a WD and once on a Maxtor. The error log is kept somewhere inside the hdd, and when the diagnostic utility is run you get a error code that is good for a RMA, no questions asked. S.M.A.R.T. does not always work, but it is nice to get a warning of impending doom. The warnings are usually well in advance on catastrophic failure which give you a chance to get a replacement hdd and transfer the OS and data.

All hard drive eventually fail, which is why I have backups, and it is nice to get a heads-up when one is going to fail.