SMART Drive Failure Imminent

[Eddie G]

Hi.

I ran the Everest utility and on my backup hard drive I have the following
with a red "x" next to it...

0A Spin Retry Count 223 215 215 31 Pre-Failure: Imminent loss of data is
being predicted

How serious is this? This is a back up disk with nothing important (unless
my primary disk goes bad, too).

Thanks!!

Eddie G

 

[Rod Speed]

I ran the Everest utility and on my backup hard drive I have the
following with a red "x" next to it...

0A Spin Retry Count 223 215 215 31 Pre-Failure: Imminent loss of data is
being predicted

How serious is this?

Pretty serious, it means that the drive doesnt spin up reliably
and that can indicate that the drive may well die. Could also be
a weak power supply too, not necessarily just the drive dying.

This is a back up disk with nothing important
(unless my primary disk goes bad, too).

Then its pretty safe to carry on regardless until it does die.
Bit more risky to keep running like that with a bad power supply.

 

[Eddie G]

Pretty serious, it means that the drive doesnt spin up reliably
and that can indicate that the drive may well die. Could also be
a weak power supply too, not necessarily just the drive dying.

It just so happens I have a new PSU on the way as I'm upgrading my video
card. But if it was that, wouldn't it affect other components on my system?

 

[Rod Speed]

It just so happens I have a new PSU on the way as I'm upgrading my
video card. But if it was that, wouldn't it affect other components
on my system?

Not necessarily, it could be that the drive is more sensitive to the rail
sagging when the drive is trying to spin up than other components.

Could also be something as basic as the metal tunnels in the
power connector that the pins go into opening up over time.
The quick check for that last is to swap the power connector
with one off one of the optical drives and see if spin retry
count continues to increase. No need in your case because
the new PSU will check that possibility too.

 

[Jonny]

Ran into this anamoly, at least on this system. In XP SP2, while running
Everest, all is normal for SMART. In 98SE, while runing Everest, shows
failure for SMART for two onboard ide hard drives. SMART is enabled in bios
setup, nothing noted during boot regarding SMART failure indication.