S.M.A.R.T. for HD in Bios or not!

762nato · Post by **762nato** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 4:39 pm

One of many Bios settings not chosen in Default settings.
Can this improve or hinder performance?
Just what do you think?

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 4:58 pm

I have mine on. AFAIK, it doesnt change the performance at all, just let's you know how healthy your drive is.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 5:55 pm

I'm curious about this - up until WinXP S.M.A.R.T. requires that there's some software running on your computer that polls SMART for the status of the drives.

I've heard some unconfirmed reports that XP has built-in SMART support, so in theory if SMART detects an imminent failure with your drive, XP will pop up a dialog box to let you know.

Anyone know if this true? Tried doing some research on the web, but SMART is one of those words that the search engines return a lot of gibberish about.

Absolut Talent · Post by **Absolut Talent** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 6:53 pm

well...from what I have read before from my 266 board, SMART does take away from the performance, but not a lot. Barely noticable.

why would you need SMART on anyways? I can tell a HD is going bad when I hear a "click, whir whir whir, click", I dont need a program to tell me that

I never had smart on......never used it. So i guess I never saw the benefits of having it on

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 7:08 pm

What it does.. I just got tired of it saying : S.M.A.R.T not enabled on S.M.A.R.T Hard Drive it would slow my boot time down by about 2 seconds.. So I turned it on.. lol.. eGo

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 8:27 pm

ABSOLUT: Modern drives give you very little warning. By the time you hear the click, your data's gone. Older drives used to give you some time after the clicking started before the drive became inaccessible.

Again, I'd be interested in knowing if XP has any SMART capability. Otherwise there's really no point in enabling it.

Absolut Talent · Post by **Absolut Talent** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 8:44 pm

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=120

basically all I could find now..

fp, i will try to look a bit later for more info on google

Instead of searching for SMART, search by the actual name of it (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 8:50 pm

I have mine enabled so I can use a small utility that reports the HD tempeature. It's a small program that runs in the task bar. It monitors every HD you might have, and you can configure the sampling time, and a temperature alarm. I have it set for updating once every 5 minutes. It's a free utility if anyone wants it, let me know and I can send it to you. I've been using it for over a year. Works great.

Absolut Talent · Post by **Absolut Talent** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 8:53 pm

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... s%3B208048

i know it doesnt have winxp specific, but win95 and 98 (guess for ME too)
and it looks like it can be modified for win2k and NT

heres some more. I didnt read it all, but it might be helpful
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/driver/wmi/smartdrv.asp

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 10:46 pm

Okay did a little more research. Apparently if you enable SMART on a modern mobo, BIOS checks smart each time you boot and if SMART reports an error, you'll get a message before the POST screen.

Unfortunately that's worthless to people like me who never turn off their computers. It's also worthless for mission critical file servers running 24/7.

I did find a very interesting shareware app here called ActiveSmart: http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/

Lets you monitor SMART from Windows and it'll even email you if SMART detects a problem (nice for remote systems).

I just installed the free trial version. Looks pretty cool. Already of value to me - it's showing me that my video drive is running hotter than the main drive. Have to look into that. It's in a removable tray with a fan, so there's no much more I can do. Doesn't feel hot to the touch. Looks like it's within an acceptable temperature range anyway.

Looks like it's worth the $25 to register it to me. Nice peace of mind.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 11:43 pm

Wow! 56°C? That's kind of toastie for a HD. Nice software find. The only value I see is the temperature monitor. For those that want just to see the temperature, here is the free one that I was talking about earlier in the thread.:
http://private.peterlink.ru/tochinov/DTemp/DTemp.zip

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 12:17 am

Well the temp monitor won't tell you if the drive is about to fail. That's the whole point of SMART monitoring. The temp is certainly useful, but I want some warning before I lose my data.

RubberDuckie · Post by **RubberDuckie** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 1:54 am

S.M.A.R.T. saved my ass once in win2k.
Told me hardrive failure was going to happen...backed up and one day later the HDD was in HDD hell.

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 2:08 am

Yeah, it let us know what was going on with out servers where I used to work. Used to get emails all the time that would say along the lines of "HDD1 on system WKOP-JPAVLECK01 is failing, marking drive as failed. Please replace drive".

Just don't get in the habit of relying on SMART to tell you when your drive is going bad, and using that as a measure of when to backup. From all I've read, SMART only knows when the drive is going to fail about 75% of the time. Pretty good odds, but with my luck most of my drives have failed because of that other 25%.

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S.M.A.R.T. for HD in Bios or not!

S.M.A.R.T. for HD in Bios or not!

I dunno..