Sarasota PC Monitor
Tech Talk (02/01)
How S.M.A.R.T. is your hard drive?
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.As we all know, hard drives do fail, often without any prior warning. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get some advance notice of a possible failure, so we could transfer our files to a new drive? Or, at the very least, make a backup of the drive. If you have purchased a computer or hard drive since 1996, it is very possible that you have a drive that is smart enough to predict it's own failure.
In 1992, IBM started producing drives that had Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA). This system monitored several drive attributes and could send a warning message when a specific threshold was reached. Eventually, this became an ANSI standard and is referred to as Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.). This technology is incorporated into most IDE and SCSI hard drives produced in the last five years.
S.M.A.R.T. monitors a number of factors that relate to predictable drive failures. There are also unpredictable drive failures, but those we can't really do much about. Predictable failures occur as a result of bearing failure, cracked or broken read/write head, electronics module failure, changes in spin-up rate, etc. There are also factors related to the failure of the read/write surface, such as seek error rate, excessive bad sectors, and reallocated sector count. Most of these are factors that can be monitored. Then, when a threshold level is exceeded, a failure warning is transmitted. That's where the problem arises. Although the drives are capable of passing these warnings on to Windows, most computers don't have any software available to receive the warning and pass it on to the user! There is no response built into Windows to handle these warnings.
(Some drive failures that occur because of changes to the drive surface may not be monitored by S.M.A.R.T. These surface changes can be detected by programs such as ScanDisk. Therefore, you need to keep using ScanDisk as part of your normal drive maintenance.)
Another item of interest is that S.M.A.R.T. must be enabled in the BIOS on most computers. It may or may not be enabled on your computer. In computers with a recent AMI BIOS, the advanced setup has a S.M.A.R.T. entry that can be enabled or disabled. This is probably true for other BIOSes as well. For most current drives, this entry should be set to "enabled".
How can you tell if your drive is S.M.A.R.T. capable? When your system boots, if you can see the memory check and the hard drive identification, you can also see an entry that says SMART capable. It will indicate whether it is disabled or enabled. However, most major brand computers (IBM, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, etc.) display a logo during boot-up. You never see any of the boot information. Because of this, you would never see any S.M.A.R.T. status or failure message. In this case all you can do is to get into the BIOS or "Setup" and see if you can find an entry for S.M.A.R.T. status and ensure that it is enabled.
So how is a user going to take advantage of this S.M.A.R.T. failure reporting? If you can't see the boot messages, then you need to obtain a software package that will report this to you via a message window in Windows. Apricorn, Inc. (www.apricorn.com) has a software program called SMART-ER that I am running on one of my computers. It is only 128K in size and can be set to run in memory with an icon in the system tray. It will pop up a window whenever any of the S.M.A.R.T. monitored parameters exceeds the drive manufacturer's specifications. The program tells you the drive is failing, but does not specify the type of failure. That alerts the user to do something about replacing the drive and/or backing up important data. Knowing the type of failure might be useful in dealing with the drive manufacturer. Especially, if the drive is still under warranty. I would like to see Apricorn make a modification to this application to include the nature of the failure problem in the report. That should increase its usefulness.
SMART-ER has a suggested retail price of $29.00. According to Apricorn's web site, there are a number of retail sources for this product. However, I was able to find it at only one outlet and only after sending an email to Apricorn's sales department. Since the product is quite new, it may be available at other sources by now.
There is another monitoring program called SmartMonitor Plus from SystemSoft (www.systemsoft.com). This program was $39.95 but the price has just been reduced to $19.95 for direct download. On another computer, I am running a copy that I downloaded from SystemSoft's web site. It is a much larger program than SMART-ER. This is partly because it includes the capability to automatically backup critical folders to a specified location if failure is imminent. Both programs can send an email notice of failure to a designated address. This might be useful for networked systems. This application, like SMART-ER, doesn't seem to tell you the nature of the failure, just that the drive is in danger of imminent failure.
The hard question is, do either of these programs work? Well, I won't be able to provide a really good answer to that until I have an actual drive failure. However, they both seem to be checking my hard drives and reporting all is well. SmartMonitor shows the last time the drive was checked and its status. SMART-ER only tells me the drive is o.k. So, stay tuned for further developments.
*Dr. Lewis, a former university & medical school professor, is a computer consultant doing instruction, hardware/software services and system upgrades.
He is available to help you with your home or business computer problems. He does make house calls and can be reached via e-mail at brian_klewis@hotmail.com or voice mail at (941) 925-3047. Note: there is an underline between the n and the k (n_k) in the email address. :
_______________________________________________________________ Copyright 2001. This article is from the February 2001 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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