Is it safe to disable SMART?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stupot
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Stupot

Hi... Another poser for you guys 'N' gals....
My friends computer seems abnormally slow. I have come to understand that
the SMART option in the BIOS can cause this. will disabling it cause me to
lose data on the drives?
Thanks in anticipation of yet more help from you brilliant people.
 
On 4/7/2007 4:10 PM On a whim, Stupot pounded out on the keyboard
Hi... Another poser for you guys 'N' gals....
My friends computer seems abnormally slow. I have come to understand that
the SMART option in the BIOS can cause this. will disabling it cause me to
lose data on the drives?
Thanks in anticipation of yet more help from you brilliant people.
Click to expand...

It won't "cause" you to lose data by turning it off. It's just
monitoring that is supposed to detect early failure of hard drives.
I've had 5 drives fail in the last couple years on two machines and it's
never detected it before I did. The key is to make backups. The more
precious your data is, the more frequently you back it up, and to more
than one device.

--
Terry

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
 
SMART doesn't inflict a performance hit on a disk drive. It's likely the
drive ( Volume ) is either "Dirty" or the controller has dropped it's mode
from UDMA down to a slower PIO mode.
This operating mode reduction is done by XP when the drive logs errors.
The system tries to eliminate the errors by lowering the mode. Unfortunately
once dropped back the system doesn't automatic revert to faster UDMA
modes and must be done manually.
Most times you can check the peripheral's operating mode by opening
the details box on the appropriate controller in Device Manager and
clicking the Advanced (TAB).
Device Manager
IDE ATA/ATAPI controller
Primary or Secondary
 
Thanks again Terry.
Terry said:
On 4/7/2007 4:10 PM On a whim, Stupot pounded out on the keyboard


It won't "cause" you to lose data by turning it off. It's just monitoring
that is supposed to detect early failure of hard drives. I've had 5 drives
fail in the last couple years on two machines and it's never detected it
before I did. The key is to make backups. The more precious your data
is, the more frequently you back it up, and to more than one device.

--
Terry

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
Click to expand...
 
R. McCarty said:
SMART doesn't inflict a performance hit on a disk drive. It's likely
the drive ( Volume ) is either "Dirty" or the controller has dropped
it's mode from UDMA down to a slower PIO mode.
This operating mode reduction is done by XP when the drive logs
errors. The system tries to eliminate the errors by lowering the mode.
Unfortunately once dropped back the system doesn't automatic revert
to faster UDMA modes and must be done manually.
Most times you can check the peripheral's operating mode by opening
the details box on the appropriate controller in Device Manager and
clicking the Advanced (TAB).
Device Manager
IDE ATA/ATAPI controller
Primary or Secondary
Click to expand...

But ... how does one get it to go back, than? Remove, restart, or what?

Pop`
 
Easiest is to remove the Primary/Secondary controller leaving the
host, reboot. XP will redetect the controllers and the operating
mode should be reset to it's maximum/native value.
 
Stupot said:
Hi... Another poser for you guys 'N' gals....
My friends computer seems abnormally slow. I have come to understand that
the SMART option in the BIOS can cause this.
Click to expand...


Not at all true. Absolute rubbish, in fact.

will disabling it cause me to lose data on the drives?
Click to expand...


Not directly, no; disabling S.M.A.R.T. will have no direct affect upon
the data. Of course, being disabled, it also won't help you preserve the
data by warning you friend of an impending hard drive failure.

For the background on S.M.A.R.T., start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology


--
Bruce Chambers

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