How clever is S.M.A.R.T?

[uberlad]

Popped home at lunch and my windows HD monitoring tool was displaying a message that was a little scary. It can be summed up as -

'Your SMART hard drive is three days away from the first point at which it feels it could fail. We recommend you start backing up your data now.'

Normally this wouldn't phase me but the drive is an IBM 60GXP and every day I expect it to burst into flames judging from the horror stories that the 'net threw up last year.

Basically I'm wondering if I can use this as a bona fide excuse to buy myself an 80Gb barracuda IV, and remove yet anothyer noisy component from my machine, or whether realistically SMART monitoring is just being incredibly cautious and I'll prolly get another two years of noisy IBM goodness out of the beast?

Uberlad

[KeiFront]

I would say start backing up your data and test your drive with IBM's DFT

[thop]

back up your data as soon as you can. it will fail, not neccesseraly in 3 days, but in 3 hours or 3 weeks.

do you have linux btw? you can see the SMART values directly there.

[ZokesPro]

I have seen many drives get a SMART message and it usually means that the drive is close to dying, unfortunetely there's no telling when it's going to die. It's like thop said, it could be in 3 hours, days or weeks.

Backup you data ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[uberlad]

Pretty much everything was backed up for a reinstall anyway.

Looking at the message again it kinda suggests that the message is more a 'your drive is 18 months old' kinda message as opposed to the 'the end is nigh' kinda thing.

We'll see - everything is ok atm.

Uberlad

[ZokesPro]

Yeah, keep us posted onwhat happens to it.

[Technoid]

At work we have a seagate that has said that it's about to fail for 3 years now....

The Q(L)uantum drive in my NLE machine started to make really funny noises and SMART told me it would fail soon....

it took it a week to fail soon

[WyWyWyWy]

What is the performance hit like when SMART is enabled?

[ZokesPro]

I think it's like having a virus scanner enabled, probably not AS bad but close.

[uberlad]

I've not really noticed the hit - but then again my IDE drivers have been caught in limbo betwewn installed and uninstalled for the last few months and that has really screwed up performance.

This, amongst many other 'Windows being installed for a while' issues are the reason for the reinstall.

I'm always amazed at the sheer volume of crap that accumulates and that windows will just not shift - or that I just don't notice for six months

Just about to try the IBM drive health thingy - once I finish copying vital data (this seasons buffy and angel episodes, and the first five episodes of 24 series two) onto the backup drive.

Wish me luck 8-)

Uberlad

[ZokesPro]

Good luck!

[UtwigMU]

I've seen the thread on Ars where one guy had RAID1 array.

One drive pwned and SMART did not notice it so it corrupted data on his other drive. SMART is reliable, but to an extent.

I just entered my WDCAC2400 in www.storagerview.com 's database and the statistics for 60GXP are not promising. Get the 'cuda or WD special edition.

[uberlad]

I waaaaant the barracuda (so very badly) but I'm buying a house tomorrow (eep) and sensible people keep suggesting that I won't have the money. Despite the fact that it's about a pound a Gig nowadays.

I'll see - maybe the decorating will be cheaper than I expect, or someone will just give me a washing machine - that'd free up the money for sure 8-)

Uberlad

[KeiFront]

Originally posted by WyWyWyWy
What is the performance hit like when SMART is enabled?

There's no performance hit, at least I never noticed any performance decrease. I always have SMART enabled.

[thop]

The performance hit is more like NADA. There are only about 15 values that smart reads. And the ones that'd do a performance hit (and have to do with the head and mechanics) only get checked when the drive is idle (and actually only CAN be checked when the drive is idle). Those tests get interrupted immediately when data is read or written.