SMART HDD

[Chris S]

Hi,

I have looked at the computer Bios and have noticed that SMART is not
enabled.
It has not been enabled since I got my computer.
The drive is a Seagate and I have XP.

Why is it not enabled, should I enable the drive?

Thanx

 

[Nick]

Always a good idea to enable it

 

[Trollslayer]

Nick<[email protected]> spewed forth with the following
drivel:

:: Always a good idea to enable it

And you make that assumption based on what? Bawawawahahahaha! I can't
believe some of the drivel here.

Buster

 

[rcm]

Why drivel? I always enable SMART. I had a harddrive warn me in SMART that
is was going bad, I downloaded the manufacturers diags to test it, it
passed. I rebooted, the next day SMART said it was having problems again.
I reran the manufacturers diags, it failed. I rebooted to get my data off
but the drive died before I could do something about it.

Moral of this story. Enable SMART, believe it right away if it says it is
going bad. Get your important stuff off, then fart around with diags
knowing you are safe. As a further extension of this, if you ever suspect
your drive is acting strange, back it up right away as you won't get much
time if it is dieing. I won't talk about regular backups, I fail at that.

BTW, does SMART have any significant overhead running. I am sure there is
something overhead wise but what.

 

[Matt]

"Do some research."

No research necessary, Smart errors are very rare but it does work,
why don't you let us all know what "drivel" you know about it???

 

[Matt]

Theres a program called "Active SMART" that monitors your drive during
windows.

 

[ChrisJ9876]

Theres a program called "Active SMART" that monitors your drive during

windows.

Another one is SIGuardian, which monitors your drives and displays each drive's
temperature on the Systray.

 

[DeMoN_LaG]

Moral of this story. Enable SMART, believe it right away if it says
it is going bad. Get your important stuff off, then fart around with
diags knowing you are safe. As a further extension of this, if you
ever suspect your drive is acting strange, back it up right away as
you won't get much time if it is dieing. I won't talk about regular
backups, I fail at that.

SMART has been telling me for like two years that my 30 gig Maxtor is
dying. Throughout this time, 2 other drives have died, neither one of them
was reported by SMART, and to this day my Maxtor is still kicking along
without a single bad sector and passing all diagnostics flawlessly.

 

[rcm]

Interesting. And you ran the Maxtor Diags that passed it. Personally from
my experience (bad) I would be nervous running the drive. To each his own.

 

[DeMoN_LaG]

Interesting. And you ran the Maxtor Diags that passed it. Personally
from my experience (bad) I would be nervous running the drive. To
each his own.

I wouldn't hesitate to run it. I've had a drive that was failed and
couldn't read or write anything pass a SMART diagnostic, and I have had
drives that fail SMART not die for over 3 years. It doesn't work.

 

[sqr]

The hard drive will take a slight hit in performance when it is enabled.

--
sqr
Overseer: alt.os.windows-xp
--
ftp://sqr.myftp.biz
http://sqr.servebeer.com/

 

[David Schwartz]

SMART has been telling me for like two years that my 30 gig Maxtor is
dying. Throughout this time, 2 other drives have died, neither one of them
was reported by SMART, and to this day my Maxtor is still kicking along
without a single bad sector and passing all diagnostics flawlessly.

What do you think this proves?

DS

 

[Trollslayer]

sqr<[email protected]> spewed forth with the following drivel:

:: The hard drive will take a slight hit in performance when it is
:: enabled.
::
:: --
:: sqr
:: Overseer: alt.os.windows-xp

I've been trying to elude to that. Telling them to do some research. It's
useless and a useless drain on your PC. But the heads in here are a little
thick.

Buster

 

[David Schwartz]

I've been trying to elude to that.

First of all, it's 'allude'. Second of all, you're a troll.

DS

 

[DeMoN LaG]

It doesn't work.

FYI, I meant to write "It doesn't work right all the time", but I was
typing this from my laptop and my girlfriend was laying on my lap and you
know how women can make your mind wander from what you are doing, and thus
it sounded like I was saying SMART is worthless, which I don't think it is.

 

[Nick]

to reduce the risk of data loss. I can't believe some of the morons on
here!!

 

[relic]

As predicted, (e-mail address removed) typed:

And you're a spell lamer and a ****wit. What now?

Buster

How can someone get "troll" out of Trollslayer? They're kinda at oposite
ends.

Wait! David is trolling.

 

[Trollslayer]

sqr<[email protected]> spewed forth with the following drivel:

:: Nick shut up already, DO NOT I SAY AGAIN DO NOT enable SMART as the
:: drive does take a hit in performance. The Hard drive will always
:: give you a hint that something is amiss even when in windows and a
:: good computer user should know the signs and act appropriately
:: before it dies.
::
:: --
:: sqr
:: Overseer: alt.os.windows-xp
:: --
:: ftp://sqr.myftp.biz
::
::
:: ::: to reduce the risk of data loss. I can't believe some of the
::: morons on here!!
:::
::: --
::: -----------
::: Nick
::: in message :::: Nick<[email protected]> spewed forth with the
:::: following drivel:
::::
:::::: Always a good idea to enable it
::::
:::: And you make that assumption based on what? Bawawawahahahaha! I
:::: can't believe some of the drivel here.
::::
:::: Buster

I'm afraid you're wasting your words on that idiot. He don't understand
anything anyway.

Buster

 

[David Schwartz]

Hi Chris,
I have not been able to detect any degradation of my system benchmarks
with SMART enabled. However, having been badly bitten in the past, I am not
prepared to rely on something like SMART to save the day. I'm guessing that
you can appreciate what a pain it can be to lose a system drive; even if
you've backed up your data, total recovery can be a daunting task!

1) There is no performance hit associated with using SMART. If anyone
claims different, challenge them to show you benchmarks.

2) You would have to be a fool to rely on SMART to warn you in advance
of a hardware failure. Yes, it might do that, but some hard drive failures
are sudden and complete.

DS

 

[rcm]

Okay, how does a fool get any warning of an impending hard disk failure?
What do you run to hopefully get some warning?

I lost a drive once. I had SMART on. It warned me something was wrong with
my drive. I took heed of the warning but instead of backing it up, I ran
the manufacturers diags, It passed. I ran it again, it passed. I did
nothing. The next day I got another SMART warning. I ran the diags and it
died in the diags test. Lost data.

So the only fool was me not backing up first on SMART warnings.

If I have SMART on, I have one tool to tell me of potential problems. I am
relying on it as well as common sense in listening to my PC for whirring,
click, grinding noise etc whenever I use it. I also run Norton defrag and
disk doctor a few times a year. I also ghost my drive as backup a couple of
times a year.

I really have a hard time understanding why some think it is so stupid to
use a tool that attempts to predict failure real-time without the user
running a tool when there is nothing else as far as I know.

You say it has no overhead, even if it did I would still run it as the
potential benefit of a hardware failure being predicted outweighs the
performance hit if any.

I worked with IBM mainframes in the 80's-90's. They had hardware failures
prediction built into their drives and OS too. I remember receiving a
message saying there was trouble with a system drive and we shut down in the
middle of the day to repair ASAP. The drive actually failed when the IBM
techs came into to check it out. This happened a few times on different
drives and OS and systems.

I am not saying SMART is anywhere near IBM mainframe drives of the 80's.
But it is a tool that can be used along with whatever other techniques to
avoid data loss. No where was it said that it was the sole tool used to
predict failure. It is just something to help when drives start failing.

Backups are the only safety net that is reliable if a good recovery plan is
in place.

So why is there such a strong attack on SMART in this newsgroup and by some
techs here. I am really curious.