SMART error ..Must H.Disc be thrown out ?

[Rob Morley]

The Maxtor D740X was the fastest and quietest drive of its time, and made
before Maxtors had problems. Is yours a D740X?

It's a DiamondMax Plus 9 (6Y080P0), a bit over three years old I think.
So at least it's lasted twice as long as the Deathstar it replaced.

 

[Trimble]

I'm the OP ...Thanks for all the responses.
But can some one give a site that explains the SMART codes .
What they mean & how to interpret them.
All I see when I run a diagnostic prog. is a lot of numbers & either FAIL or
OK
..Surly I can tell the state of the drive before some check has reached the
Fail state ??
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") Mouse

 

[Conor]

I'm the OP ...Thanks for all the responses.
But can some one give a site that explains the SMART codes .
What they mean & how to interpret them.
All I see when I run a diagnostic prog. is a lot of numbers & either FAIL or
OK
.Surly I can tell the state of the drive before some check has reached the
Fail state ??

No. SMART only reports when a fail has been detected.

 

[John Jordan]

I'm the OP ...Thanks for all the responses.
But can some one give a site that explains the SMART codes .
What they mean & how to interpret them.
All I see when I run a diagnostic prog. is a lot of numbers & either FAIL or
OK
..Surly I can tell the state of the drive before some check has reached the
Fail state ??

Yes and no. Many drives fail without ever registering any kind of SMART
error - around 40%, if I recall the Google survey correctly. Otherwise,
the critical parameters are:

Current Pending Sector (sometimes called "scan errors"?)
Offline Correctable
Reallocated Sectors

If any of these rise above zero, your drive has a problem that's likely
(although far from certain) to get worse. Note that you can sometimes
cause these with one-off power failures.

 

[paulmd]

I'm the OP ...Thanks for all the responses.
But can some one give a site that explains the SMART codes .
What they mean & how to interpret them.
All I see when I run a diagnostic prog. is a lot of numbers & either FAIL or
OK
.Surly I can tell the state of the drive before some check has reached the
Fail state ??
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") Mouse

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

Eyes, ears, and brain is another way to tell if something's going to
fail before it has. Sharp reductions in performace, new noises,
Freezes, and hangs, and crashes, etc. But all of these symptoms have
other causes, too, so it's difficult to prove short of actual
diagnostics.

Don't ignore SMART warnings. It's imperfect, but it's still one of the
best ways to predict a disk failure before it happens.