Enabling S.M.A.R.T.

[samoo]

Hi, I'm trying to install Win2k by booting from the CD, and when it says its copying the files over to the HD, it says that if I enable SMART that it would be alot faster. Cause now it crawls along and just the copying of files takes close to 2 hours on a PIII 550/32X CDROM!! Does anyone know how to enable SMART? I don't see it in my BIOS or anywhere else. Thanks

 

[Quake]

Check your manual, It may be in the advanced area.

 

[Sunner]

Correct me if Im wrong, but isn't SMART just for detecting when a HD is about to fail, before it actually does?

Anyways I've used SMART, and all it did was shut my HD down once in a while cause it thought it was failing, resulting in quite a few outrages from me.

My HD is still working just fine, and now without SMART, I havent had a single shutdown, I'ev heard similar stories from others as well.

 

[mboy]

I wouldnt ( and never have) use it, but the setting should be in your bios.

 

[SUOrangeman]

S.M.A.R.T. is indeed for hard drive failure detection. But that's not the "SMART" we are talking about here.

Sounds like you are trying to copy the files from the CD onto your hard drive without actually booting the Win2K CD. Are you 100% sure that the install is starting from the CD right from boot-up? There is a smartdrv.exe driver can be loaded within DOS to enable upper memory use (I think) for more intense things like copying large amounts of files. That's the SMART I think you are seeing in this case. I've never used it, as booting directly off of a legit Win2K CD handles everything for you.

-SUO

 

[samoo]

yes thats the SMART I'm talking about. I am booting directly from the CD, set the CD to be the 1st boot device, and then when installing I tell it to delete the partition(C and then to format it as either NTFS or FAT32 and then to begin the installation. At this point the files begin to copy off the CD and I get the message about enabling SMART to make the installation faster. I've had to let the machine copy files at a super slow rate, it works ok, but I just thought cutting down the time from 2 hours would be nice. Thanks for the quick responses!

 

[Doh!]

Next time you need to re-install XP (hope it doesn't happen too often), and XP cd again whines about not having smartdrv.exe, just install from DOS and enable smartdrv.exe. This should speed up the copying process (about 10 min. or less to complete the copying process). Your win9x boot disk should have smartdrv.exe. If not, just go to any win9x computer, do a search for the file, you'll usually find it in windows directory (maybe in systems).

 

[Sunner]

Ahhh, smartdrv, now THATS old school stuff, I remember messing with that when I was running DOS, befoer 9x and NT came along in my life

 

[samoo]

Thanks alot guys! I'll try to install it like that next time and not setting it to boot from the CD.

 

[bozo1]

A legit copy of XP would install smartdrive automatically when you boot from it. Sounds like you have a bootable DOS CD with the XP files copied to it which boots you to DOS for the install instead of the XP boot loader.

 

[SUOrangeman]

That's what I'm thinking, bozo. I would think that anything coming directly from MS would have smartdrv built-in ... even though the legit CD doesn't even use DOS.

Hey, have you tried making the four boot floppies? I'd bet that they would include smartdrv before accessing the CD.

-SUO