What does SMART failure mean?

Answer 1

There are several things SMART can detect, but from my understanding it's pretty reliable. I'd back up your critical data and wait it out, unless your data is so critical that you can't afford to lose any of it, or afford the downtime. Here is my experience. I have the same problem with you: Warning message, press F1 and everything seems to be fine. What I did to solve it is to add a fan ($9 at Compusa) to the hard drive. After about 3 days of installing the fan, the warning message just gone forever. Also, the hard disk temp is way cooler than it used to be. Your hard drive is about to die. Buy a new one and ghost the data from the old drive to the new one. It means your harddrive is failing. Exactly how can vary but basically it's telling you time to buy a new one and transfer the data. Although in some cases the error can be fixed by adding cooling or defragging and/or formatting. It just depends but be safe, get a new one. S.M.A.R.T is an acronoym for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology systems (SMART) and it's usually built in to most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks. I recently opened my case to find out my hard drive was very hot to touch and immediatly was concerned about the operating temprature. So I went and downloaded Speedfan.

== Since 1997, hard drive manufacturers use SMART technology, which stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. It's supposed to warn you of impending failure so you can back up your data. Unfortunately they should name it STUPID (Supposed To Utilize Program Integrity, Doesn't), because it rarely ever warns anyone before it dies. I have personally witnessed over 50 hard drives die quick deaths without any SMART notification to the user. My best advice is to run disk tools like Scandisk to detect drive problems and listen for any new unusual sounds emanating from inside the case (especially a thumping or clunking sound). If you hear this, then immediately make full backups before the drive dies, because it is certainly on its last legs. Google conducted a research study of 100,000 hard drives in their organization and published failure results in a paper published April 2007. Among their conclusions: ..."we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures."

If you are fortunate anough to own one of the 30% or less of dying SMART drives that actually warns you of impending doom, then immediately copy personal data to a second drive (solid state flash driver preferably). Make a disk image of the entire drive if time permits so you can be back and running quickly with a new drive. I prefer Acronis True Image for home consumers as a fast and effective drive imaging solution.

as we know SMART services is best for hard drive failure indication. We can activate it by use of BIOS setting. If any case it doesn't work use stellar smart software drive monitoring system that gives the current values of various hard disk parameters such as Temperature, Head Flying Height, Spin-Up Time etc. If you have this software then it's a lot easier to back-up than to get your data recovered. Once you detect any of the signs of failure you need to ensure that you have a back-up and if not, make one. If in worst case you lost your data or hard drive crashes then use data recovery service for recover your data.

SMART is to measure your HDD health. If it goes down, it's a good idea to backup important stuff and prepare to replace the HDD.