S.M.A.R.T errors

Zirax · 06-07-2008, 21:13

Well one of my Seagate 500gb's has just decided to die. I had noticed late last night that one of the hdds wasn't sounding very healthy but there were no smart errors so I just ignored it. Just booted into windows and it seems in its very last screams of life it threw a smart error

Maybe I understood smart wrong but I thought that a hdd would give more warning than just buggering up that quickly. ie more of a degradation. I suppose the extra noise was a warning, but odd that nothing was reported?

I do have to say that the intel storage manager on the new motherboards is damn good. A big improvement over the nvidia raid that was on the Nforce models.

I'm more miffed that its only a few months old.

Mark · 06-07-2008, 21:26

S.M.A.R.T. is a guide, and nothing more. It's only good for gradually-occurring failures like bad sectors or calibration issues. Sudden mechanical failures, head crashes etc., though rarer, aren't going to cause S.M.A.R.T. errors until it is too late.

I've had a disk where the head servo died suddenly about a month after I installed it. That one locked up the drive electronics and the IDE card as well (I have an IDE RAID card in my server). First I knew about it was when the system stopped responding. Luckily it was on a RAID-1 array and I had a cold spare to hand.

Zirax · 06-07-2008, 22:32

Hmmm, interesting. I was thinking that although there was something mechanical dieing that more errors would be thrown. Not really an issue as I have a replacement on order and the remaining raid disk is backed up

06-07-2008, 21:13	#1
Zirax Goes up to 11! Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,577	S.M.A.R.T errors Well one of my Seagate 500gb's has just decided to die. I had noticed late last night that one of the hdds wasn't sounding very healthy but there were no smart errors so I just ignored it. Just booted into windows and it seems in its very last screams of life it threw a smart error Maybe I understood smart wrong but I thought that a hdd would give more warning than just buggering up that quickly. ie more of a degradation. I suppose the extra noise was a warning, but odd that nothing was reported? I do have to say that the intel storage manager on the new motherboards is damn good. A big improvement over the nvidia raid that was on the Nforce models. I'm more miffed that its only a few months old.

06-07-2008, 21:26	#2
Mark Screaming Orgasm Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Newbury Posts: 15,194	S.M.A.R.T. is a guide, and nothing more. It's only good for gradually-occurring failures like bad sectors or calibration issues. Sudden mechanical failures, head crashes etc., though rarer, aren't going to cause S.M.A.R.T. errors until it is too late. I've had a disk where the head servo died suddenly about a month after I installed it. That one locked up the drive electronics and the IDE card as well (I have an IDE RAID card in my server). First I knew about it was when the system stopped responding. Luckily it was on a RAID-1 array and I had a cold spare to hand. Last edited by Mark; 06-07-2008 at 21:29.

06-07-2008, 22:32	#3
Zirax Goes up to 11! Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 4,577	Hmmm, interesting. I was thinking that although there was something mechanical dieing that more errors would be thrown. Not really an issue as I have a replacement on order and the remaining raid disk is backed up