Does anyone use SMART?

[Ionizer86]

I noticed that my bios suports SMART and Hitachi's Feature tools can enable SMART for both my Maxtor and my Seagate.

Does anyone use SMART? Has anyone ever found SMART to be helpful? How big is the performance hit? BTW for anyone who needs it, here is the FAQ on SMART.

 

[InlineFive]

I never noticed a performance hit but I disabled it because every little bit helps! I only use SMART when I am testing a hard drive reliability or temps in summer.

-Por

 

[Ionizer86]

If I want to use SMART I simply turn it on via bios and for the drives via Hitachi's tools, and if a drive may start failing, I'll get a warning during bootup, correct? Or is there more to using SMART?

 

[AndyHui]

You have it correct. I have it switched on for all my drives.

 

[Ionizer86]

Hmm, thanks Andy! Sounds good, especially since my Maxtor almost trashed out last weekend.

 

[Sunner]

Back in the day when SMART was new, I had alot of problems with it, but these days, I find no reason to leave it disabled.

It's saved two guys at work countless hours lately, one got a warning, and we swapped HD's and left his old one there to backup the stuff on it, het got ~90% of his data from the drive before it failed.
The other guy is in the middle of this process now, but has already recovered a large portion of his data.

If SMART had not been enabled, the disks would probably just have gievn up and cost us craploads of time and money.

Moral of the story: SMART is a Good Thing(TM).

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
I never noticed a performance hit but I disabled it because every little bit helps! I only use SMART when I am testing a hard drive reliability or temps in summer.

-Por

I'm pretty sure SMART only does anything during boot up... checks for problems... so there wouldn't be any performance differences with it enabled.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: AndyHui
You have it correct. I have it switched on for all my drives.

SMART has saved me from data loss on two occassions. I will always have SMART enabled (until something better comes along then I'll use that instead).

 

[Looney]

I seem to have badluck with drives, and have them fail quite often. With SMART, i've been alerted so far to 2 drives and have replaced them before they failed. Of course i used them to store junk, and eventually they did die, so it does seem to be quite useful.

 

[Elcs]

In my personal experience, SMART has been completely useless.

I and my father have owned HDD's since 20 mb versions in our Aminga 1200's and NEVER had one fail yet for any reason. Still got my 1.6 Gb running and thats been going for 7 years.

BUT I have read many a thread or post praising its Data-saving predictions into the future and I havent read any posts that prove or even suggest that SMART would drop even 1 fps from the hundreds that Quake 3 can generate.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

I'm pretty sure SMART only does anything during boot up... checks for problems... so there wouldn't be any performance differences with it enabled.

I'm only guessing, but I think that SMART is active at all times. If you run a Windows based SMART monitor, the values do change while the computer is running.

 

[MDE]

I just leave it on. Saved my bacon twice.

 

[Lyfer]

I use it. Reliability and stability is always first.

 

[zephyrprime]

I'm pretty sure SMART only does anything during boot up... checks for problems... so there wouldn't be any performance differences with it enabled.

In Windows XP, if your drive is questionable, it will say so in the disk manager. So it's not only at bootup. I don't know for a fact but I would guess SMART dynamically notifies the OS if the OS supports it.

As for speed, I doubt that it has any effect on speed. HD mechanical speed limitations are so much greater than any little amount of overhead that SMART might introduce.

I and my father have owned HDD's since 20 mb versions in our Aminga 1200's and NEVER had one fail yet for any reason. Still got my 1.6 Gb running and thats been going for 7 years.

I have had HD's since the 20MB models and I've had a 3 fail on me.

 

[jhites]

I have run HDTach with Smart on and off. There does seem to be a minor performance hit with Smart enabled but it is so small that it really does not matter. Many ppl say that you will get a faster boot with Smart disabled but I don't notice any difference personally. I leave it enabled just because it gives me a warm feeling of security. I had a Maxtor give me a notification once and was able to save everything. Sent the drive back to Maxtor for a free replacement.

 

[Accord99]

Another good thing about SMART is that it provides interesting details regarding your HD, such as the power-on time, number of start/stop cycles, temperature, whether any bad sectors have been found and replaced, etc.

 

[jm0ris0n]

Smart saved one of my drives.

 

[Hamilton]

Originally posted by: Elcs
In my personal experience, SMART has been completely useless.

I and my father have owned HDD's since 20 mb versions in our Aminga 1200's and NEVER had one fail yet for any reason. Still got my 1.6 Gb running and thats been going for 7 years.

So if you havent been involved in a car accident you dont need to use seatbelts? Just because it has not happend to you (yet), does not mean it aint a good thing to use.

 

[crisscross]

I just enabled SMART on my Hard Drive, and on bootup it said something on the lines of

WARNING: Primary Hard Drive Error, Failure imminent.. Please backup data..

:S
What should i do? Can you recommend a good diagnostic utilty please?

Thanks in advance...

 

[amdskip]

First back your data up. I'd run the respective manufacturer's test software on it.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: amdskip
First back your data up. I'd run the respective manufacturer's test software on it.

And do it ASAP. You might wanna check your warranty, too. If it's still in effect, get your RMA number. SMART has never been wrong for me.

Tornado54, look in the event viewer. You'll probably see errors there now as well.

 

[WobbleWobble]

I'm not sure if I would say SMART was wrong in my case, but SMART got triggered on boot up and said that the HDD was failing.

I ran PowerMax and it detected the error.

I zero-filled the drive to get rid of sensitive business data that was stored on it and it got rid of the SMART error too, therefore not letting me RMA.

I've been trying to run that drive down to the ground for months now to no avail, but it's working like a champ.

 

[VioletAura]

There are programs that you can use that will monitor the SMART status of your drives anytime.

 

[Dragon365]

Originally posted by: Elcs
In my personal experience, SMART has been completely useless.

I and my father have owned HDD's since 20 mb versions in our Aminga 1200's and NEVER had one fail yet for any reason. Still got my 1.6 Gb running and thats been going for 7 years.

BUT I have read many a thread or post praising its Data-saving predictions into the future and I havent read any posts that prove or even suggest that SMART would drop even 1 fps from the hundreds that Quake 3 can generate.

Looks like someone hasn't owned a 75gxp...

 

[thorin]

Ya I like to be able to check my drive's health every few months. Plus SpeedFan can read SMART info including temps.

Thorin