Hey Dan, S.M.A.R.T. is a set of diagnostics capabilities that is built onto the hard disk's controller.
A typical description reads: S.M.A.R.T. technology S.M.A.R.T. stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. S.M.A.R.T. technology was developed by a number of major hard disk drive manufacturers in a concerted effort to increase the reliability of drives. It is a technology that enables the PC to predict the future failure of hard disk drives. S.M.A.R.T. technology has become an industry standard for hard drive manufacturers. Through the S.M.A.R.T. system, modern hard disk drives incorporate a suite of advanced diagnostics that monitor the internal operations of a drive and provide an early warning for many types of potential problems. When a potential problem is detected, the drive can be repaired or replaced before any data is lost or damaged. The S.M.A.R.T. system monitors the drive for anything that might seem out of the ordinary, documents it, and analyzes the data. If it sees something that indicates a problem, it is capable of notifying the user (or system administrator). S.M.A.R.T. monitors disk performance, faulty sectors, recalibration, CRC errors, drive spin-up time, drive heads, distance between the heads and the disk platters, drive temperature, and characteristics of the media, motor and servomechanisms. The errors the system can detect can be predicted by a number of methods. Currently the SMART system can detect about 70% of all hard drive errors. Here's an example: motor and/or bearing failure can be predicted by an increase in the drive spin-up time and the number of retries it takes to get the drive spinning at full speed. Or, if the drive notes that error correction is being needed excessively, it can attribute this to a broken drive head or surface contamination, and it will create an alert before the problem gets worse. Armed with a prediction of failure, the user or system administrator can make a backup copy of key data, replace a suspect device prior to data loss, and avoid undesired downtime. We find detection so reliable that should Disk Utility or Disk Warrior indicate a S.M.A.R.T. failure, we replace the drive immediately - no questions asked. Ward Ward Oldham, MacDude MacTown 128 Breckenridge Lane Louisville, KY 40207 502-485-1243 ward at mactown.us http://www.mactown.us On May 31, 2005, at 9:17 PM, Dan Crutcher wrote: > My wife's G4 iMac has been freezing up and exhibiting other > aberrent behavior recently. I originally thought it might be > because I just installed Tiger on it, but tonight I tried to run > Disk Utility and noticed, first, that the name of the hard drive > and volume were displayed in red. When I select either of them, I > get a message saying that the S.M.A.R.T. feature has detected a > "failing" hard drive and to back up any important documents -- > which, of course, I promptly did. > > This is my first encounter with one of these S.M.A.R.T. messages. > Are they generally accurate? Are there any conditions that might > generate this message other than a true drive failure? In other > words, is it definitely time to order a new hard drive, or are > there some tricks I might try on this one first? > > Dan > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be May 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> > | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20050531/7d2d47b8/attachment.html
