SMART Disks

[websquad]

I've been reading little bits in the past few weeks about some advanced disk diagnostics that you can get if you have SMART turned on for your disk drives. I have two disk arrays on my main XP/Pro systems (it is about a year old): a pair of Western Digital 150GB drives, 10,000 RPM, in a RAID-1 array, for system/programs; and a pair of Western Digital 500GB drives, 7,200, in a RAID-1 array, for data.

At this point, I've had no problems with my hard disks.

Would SMART help me? If so, how do I turn it on? If you have it on your machine, have you found it useful?

 

[Tmagic650]

Your motherboard has to support SMART capability. You will see SMART settings in the bios. If you have no SMART support you can run Western Digitals software to check SMART Status on their drives

 

[SNGX1275]

Its almost always on in the BIOS by default, its really pretty worthless. The only time I've seen a drive fail SMART was when I was already having problems with it. Its supposed to fail before the drive actually dies, giving you some time to back stuff up and replace it, but I'm not sure how often that happens with enough warning to be of use.