S.M.A.R.T. status?

[Adel]

---

---

One of my desktop's drives is acting up. Sometimes when I boot up, the Mac gives a faint double-beep, several times during the boot routine, and sometimes the drive doesn't mount, sometimes it does. I use Disk Repair to verify it and it passes, but the SMART status is "failing".

Dear Gurus, what exactly does that mean?

[theweatherman]

The hard drive is failing it own diagnostics, as the S.M.A.R.T. status indicates (can seemto find the definition of S.M.A.R.T.)

Better back-up the files in the hard drive before it is too late!

[elbert]

I got this from Stephen Withers' Weblog:

S.M.A.R.T. disk checking

Mac OS X 10.3 reports S.M.A.R.T. disk status. For more detailed reporting, or for checking S.M.A.R.T. status under 10.2, try Granite Digital's SMART.

Most recent ATA hard disks have on-board diagnostic capabilities called S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) which can draw attention to developing problems before any data is lost.

With Mac OS 10.3 you can check the S.M.A.R.T. status of your drives from Disk Utility. Click First Aid, and select the drive (not one of the volumes it contains) from the left hand pane. At the lower right of the window you should see "S.M.A.R.T. status : Verified". This means everything is fine, but "S.M.A.R.T. status : About to fail" means it's time to buy a new drive.

If you want more detailed reporting, or you're staying with Mac OS 10.2, try Granite Digital's SMART. You'll need the Pro version ($US19.95) unless your drive is in one of Granite's enclosures, but it generates alerts when S.M.A.R.T. warnings are detected, lets you examine individual parameters, and provides drive testing and benchmarking. (Testing and benchmarking are available in the free Lite version.)

[Henjie]

Adel: time to buy a new hard drive. 80GB 7200rpm drives now cost less than P4,500 anyway. +P1,000 for 120GB drives. Extra storage space for all your D60 images. :-)


~Henjie

[mikaelrules]

One of my HD's also report a SMART status failure... I plan to replace it with a Hitachi 7K250. Any idea where to find one here?

[Henjie]

Originally posted by mikaelrules
One of my HD's also report a SMART status failure... I plan to replace it with a Hitachi 7K250. Any idea where to find one here?

I was in Virra Mall a couple of days ago. Never did come across any Hitachi (or Western Digital) hard drives. Laging Seagate and Maxtor. MSI-Digiland's supposed to be the local distributor of Hitachi storage products so maybe you can try calling up one of their sales people. ;-)


~Henjie