Help S.M.A.R.T sattus Bad - any recovery steps?

[James W. Long]

Dear All

Any recovery steps I can take if my S.M.A.R.T. disk monitor
reports the status is BAD? I alread backed up and made
an ERD.

Is there any {utility} way to fix the drive like something
that rewrites every sector?

How do I reset the bad status? As in, to read it fresh
again?

One more silly little question,
How accurate is SMART and when it says BAD
what does that mean? I copied a huge backup
to an 80 gig and thats when I started getting the
message. before that it was fine, and I can
still boot from it.


Thank you in advance for helping me
with this serious problem.

James

 

[SF]

Not familiar with SMART, but you should go over their
support docs to see what each status means, etc. Have you
ran a chkdsk /r on the volume during a reboot to see if
anything if found/fixed?

Could try that with a query to SanTools? TS to see what to
do next.

Bad status could mean the app. is reporting a minimum
number of errors reading/writing to the disk, so it
says "bad"....like a dummy oil light on your car. If all
is backed up, check the disk for errors, all kinds and fix
what you can. Does the disk controller have any
report/log file that it keeps that you can review? This
might shed some light.

 

[DL]

You could try yr hd manu.site for a disk checking utility - they are
sometimes able to repair

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

Having seen the same error, I can only say: "Back up your data
daily until you replace that drive."

On those machines I on which I've seen those S.M.A.R.T. warnings,
catastrophic hard drive failures invariably followed. Some hard
drives lasted for a few days after the warnings first appeared, one
lasted months, and some lasted only minutes. I suppose the one that
lasted months could be considered a false alarm, as months hardly
translate to "imminent," but, on the whole, I'd suggest you take the
warnings seriously.


Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. - RAH

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

From whatis.com (http://whatis.techtarget.com/):

"Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) is
an interface between a computer's start-up program or BIOS (basic
input/output system) and the computer hard disk. It is a feature of
the Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE) technology that
controls access to the hard drive. If S.M.A.R.T is enabled when a
computer is set up, the BIOS can receive analytical information from
the hard drive and determine whether to send the user a warning
message about possible future failure of the hard drive. "

As you can see, this is purely a function of the PC's
hardware/firmware and the hard drive; it has nothing to do with any
operating system.


Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. - RAH