S.M.A.R.T - worth turning on ?

[deejayburnout]

afternoon peeps

Never ever used S.M.A.R.T before but as I have aging HDDs, is it worth turning on.

Not sure how it works or how to use it.

Any advice.

[KeyboardDemon]

As I recall SMART will detect mechanical faults as they start to develop but it won't detect things like corruption on the disk platters themselves. If you have got corrupted files due to unexpected shutdowns through BSOD or sudden powerloss etc... then SMART won't notice those and some people claim that it gives you a false sense of security because there could be errors present that SMART doesn't detect but as they haven't been reported users don't take any remedial steps.

I think it's not a bad idea use SMART so long as you are aware of its limitations and regularly check your disk for errors in the file structure etc..

[aidanjt]

You don't need to turn it on as such. SMART runs constantly on the hard drive's controller. Various software (motherboard firmwares, operating systems, hard drive utilities, etc) uses it to check for statistical signs of drive failure or impending failure. You only really need to start the SMART function of hard drive utilities to run the drives' extended test suite, which can take hours before the drive can log a result.

[Agent]

To extend slightly on what aidanjt has said - you're probably referring to turning it on in the BIOS. If this is what you mean, then sure, it won't hurt anything. The BIOS has some pre-programmed limits on what it considers to be not normal and will alert you shortly after POST if this happens.

Even if you don't have this enabled though, you can still access the SMART data through many programs. You can even use the excellent UBCD and boot directly into Parted Magic. Insanely useful if you can't boot the OS and suspect a drive issue. It will allow you to check for any logged SMART issues and a plethora of other things.

[DanceswithUnix]

Am surprised that Windows doesn't seem to make much use of SMART. I always turn it on.

With the BIOS option I think it just asks the hard drive if it is healthy or not when you reboot. I don't reboot very often, so not that useful to me.

Under Linux, I have had my machine send me an email telling me to back up and replace one of the drives which looked like it will fail soon. Doesn't always work mind, sometimes they still just die without warning, but if a feature can push things a bit in my favour I say it is worth using.

[badass]

Am surprised that Windows doesn't seem to make much use of SMART. I always turn it on.

Windows logs errors in the event logs if the motherboard reports SMART errors. Quite a descriptive error as well IIRC.
You can use event triggers to make it do something if the error is logged.

[deejayburnout]

Good info guys.

At the moment, its turned off on my bios and now tempted to turn it on, as its seems to be purely for status gathering of my drives, I have no fears that it will shutdown my drives.

My drives are well old and I am looking to get them replaced.

[d3m0n1q_733rz]

S.M.A.R.T. monitoring is a very good thing to have enabled. I use a boot disk to check the status of my drives from time to time to ensure that I'm not running into excessive errors. It can tell you if there are errors between your motherboard and your drive in the data that's being sent and received as well as if a part in the drive itself is failing.
Semi-recently, I had a Samsung drive that was giving me write errors and was in what is known as pre-fail. As it had failed the S.M.A.R.T. tests, it was eligible for replacement under warranty and I lost no data in the process. In particular, I believe that having S.M.A.R.T. enabled on a notebook computer is fairly more important as having it enabled on a PC because of all of the jolts your notebook gets. That's not to say that it's unimportant on the PC, but the problems you'll run into with those will be wear related.
One of the really nice features is the ability to tell you how long the drive has been powered on and spinning so that you can see if you need to change your power settings to reduce how long your HDDs are on without being used. An important tool that you might look into (though a little dangerous if you don't know what you're doing) is MHDD. You can access your S.M.A.R.T. data and set your drives for their maximum speed or quiet them down. You could even perform a low-level format to try to repair/replace bad sectors after you've backed-up your data.
Give it a try!

[Samwood]

Whenever I switch SMART on my PC wont boot. Any reason why this is happening?

Edit: Fixed

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Its the S.M.A.R.T. thing to do.

[d3m0n1q_733rz]

No actually. Unless you've changed out your drive and the BIOS is dependent upon the particular drive that the computer came with. But as far as HDDs go, S.M.A.R.T. is on 24/7 unless you disable it's polling. You don't have to have the BIOS set to read it, you can do that in software.

[deejayburnout]

Its the S.M.A.R.T. thing to do.

Why did you have to do that?

I will get your coat.

Ok so been using it for a few weeks now and no reports of bad drives ( yeah ), however one of my drives is slow to react after not being accessed for a while. ( i notice it in the mornings ). this didn't happen before so wondering if S.M.A.R.T is interfering?

[d3m0n1q_733rz]

Why did you have to do that?

I will get your coat.

Ok so been using it for a few weeks now and no reports of bad drives ( yeah ), however one of my drives is slow to react after not being accessed for a while. ( i notice it in the mornings ). this didn't happen before so wondering if S.M.A.R.T is interfering?

No, S.M.A.R.T. doesn't have that effect on drives. It was running on the drive before you even enabled the BIOS to read it directly. Most likely, what's happening is that your drive goes to low power mode and stop spinning after a certain amount of time to save power and help it to last longer. After all, if you're not using the drive constantly, it doesn't make sense for it to be running constantly.
However, you might check the S.M.A.R.T. data directly using a S.M.A.R.T. data utility so verify that everything's in the green and above fail values. In particular, pay attention to transfer errors as these errors aren't necessarily drive related as much as motherboard or cable. They would cause these problems too. I imagine running a chkdsk on the drive wouldn't hurt either as most people don't do this after their computer crashes or loses power which leaves errors on the drive.