are you S.M.A.R.T.?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

What exactly is the benefit of S.M.A.R.T.?
Does enabling it compromise drive performance in any way?

[jagabo]

SMART will detect some drive errors and can sometimes warn of imminent drive failure. It doesn't effect system performance. You should have it enabled.

[JerryB]

hi,
It can give you a heads up if there a potential mechanical problem however......

SMART will only detect mechanical errors it does not detect electronic errors and from test that google has made on there hard drives (they have about 100,000.. smile) it only has about 36% detection rate...
bottom line smart isn't that smart...lol... sorry for the pun... smiling....

here a link to the google disk drives report, it covers several things ... and has section on the SMART ....
http://216.239.37.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf

What exactly is the benefit of S.M.A.R.T.?
Does enabling it compromise drive performance in any way?

[edong]

Assuming SMART detects a possible sign of imminent failure, how does it tell me on the screen? Will it display inside Windows or when booting up?

[SLK001]

...it only has about 36% detection rate...

But that's an infinitely better detection rate than it would be without it enabled. SMART isn't perfect, but it CAN give you ample warning of imminent disk failure - enough time to transfer important data off the drive to a different one.

[jagabo]

Saved my ass a few times.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

does it utilize system resources?

[bigstusexy]

First thing, smart is a monitering system, it won't do anything for you less you have a reader.

Where and what are you looking at to enable or use smart?

The second poster had some good information and actually smart is a good thing its just that its not fool proof.

It will detect a host of things if the MFG allows it:
Temp
Relocated Sectors (your drive is going bad but has spare sectors, in any case you see this you get a new drive)
Spin up times and retires.

All that is hardware and can be a great sing of a problem. it will not however detect:

Write CRC errors
Read CRC errors
Transfer Errors.


Those can be real killers too. My opinion is to enable it and run a checking program every now and then. I use HDTune, its not the greatest but it has trouble coloring, a surface test and benchmark, when I suspect a system drive of being bad the first thing I do is check its smart stats. The Smart system is within your Hard Drive and will in no way impact your performance, in fact, if you don't use a monitoring program or enable it in the bios, the drive will still collect this data even if you choose not to use it.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

First thing, smart is a monitering system, it won't do anything for you less you have a reader.

Where and what are you looking at to enable or use smart?...

All 4 PC's in the house have an option in the BIOS to enable/disable S.M.A.R.T.. 4 totally different mobo's -- 2 different model MSI's, 1 ASUS, and 1 Dell.

I've got HDTune, HDDLife and HDD Inspector. All read various amounts of S.M.A.R.T. data.
My main interest in this is was whether or not the 'application' could be tuned/tweaked and reliability of the data it provides.
All three of these programs show that my C: drive is running at around 175C in my media PC. Even immediately after I boot, it shows this incredibly high temperature. I know that this cannot be true, because that's hot as all hell, and I can reach inside the machine and physically feel each of my 3 HD's in that machine and the C: is only slightly warmer than the two 2ndary drives.
I figure it's either a bad temp sensor in the drive, or something wacky with the S.M.A.R.T. for that drive (or a combination of both).

In the article linked by JerryB, it is noted that operating temperature doesn't really seem to have much of an effect on performance or life cycle except in extreme situations, which is something I have suspected for quite some time anyway... I see ridiculously expensive HD coolers online & in stores and just have to laugh.
I can think of better things to throw my money away on.

[bigstusexy]

Yeah thats what google found, I do find that my two 300GB Segates in my server run hot but they have been completely error free since installed 3 years ago.

As far as the temp goes... hmmm... let me convert, although I use F for tempratures outsides and in my body in computer land I use C. Oh wait you said 175C... are you sure? Thats like bloody hot! At that point I think your drives would bee seezing. Unfortunately all the programs do is read the data.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

...Oh wait you said 175C... are you sure? Thats like bloody hot! At that point I think your drives would bee seezing. Unfortunately all the programs do is read the data.

yeah, something along the lines of 350F. There's no way in hell that information coming from the S.M.A.R.T. is correct.
It's either a faulty temp sensor or something wrong with the S.M.A.R.T..
I sure as hell wouldn't be able to touch the drive to compare with the others...

[pfh]

Yeah, you could bake a chicken if that were true!
Just to add that SMART has saved my behind as well.