Mr. Moderator, your attention please.

[Toaster]

Hello folks,

This may be posted in the wrong area and if so, forgive me but I have something stuck in my craw.

I was rather board yesterday and watched a number of the "Mech TV" installments on the welcome screen of this site. One in particular caught my attention where "the spokesperson" was discussing how to identify and or troubleshoot a failing hard disc. A critical oversight was made and wanted to bring this to your attention.

Since the late 80's, most hard discs have a feature called "S.M.A.R.T.". This is actually; "Smart Monitoring -and- Reporting Technology."

When a hard disc is made, it's relevant operational perimeters are known and stored by the drive electronics -and- when the drive operates outside of the parameters, it sets a "fail" bit indication the drive had encountered an issue. This feature is not bugless and can be tricked into having the feature "tripped" thus indication a possible failure, either pending or immediate. Regardless if the setting of the "failure" bit is valid, hard disc manufacturers will replace the drive if under warranty.

The issue comes from motherboard/system board manufacturers who often disable the "SMART" feature. If enabled -and- the drive is experiencing issues, the operator is greeted with a warning screen prior to starting, in effect, it says;
"SMART diagnostics report a pending hardware failure on device xxx" However, even if the drive is becoming problematic -and- the SMART feature is disabled, the user is never notified.

The SMART feature is not fool proof but it is a valid indicator, this feature exists in IDE, EIDE, SATA, SCSI, SASI but may be disabled in your system BIOS.


In conclusion, I felt, during the presentation, that this feature was overlooked as well as typically overlooked by most builders. The reason -WHY- system board makers often disable this feature is because it's possible to set a failure bit when the drive itself is actually healthy. However, if the drive is not healthy, your data is in great peril, and that is my reason for this post.
Common SMART failures are repetitive "Buffer" misses and prefetch errors, if you want a detailed explanation, please advise.

Again, any drive manufacturer will replace a drive that reports a SMART error provided the drive is under warranty because often, the error is valid, the drive is having an issue. On the onset of a SMART error, users are advised to make their back-ups without delay, that should be your primary concern. Only after a valid back-up is complete should you investigate the error by running appropriate software to validate the error, this software is available for download from the drive manufacturers website. Remember that your data is in great peril any time the SMART error exists and once this error is set, it is often a permanent error and cannot be reset but some can after running a diagnostic program to "re-certify" the drive.


I hope this information was useful.

[HAL9000]

I've never understood why people disable SMART in the BIOS, it doesn't have any negative performance effects.

[Toaster]

Hello Hal,

People often don't disable the feature, often the system board maker does and peopledon't understand "what" it is thus leave it disabled.

And one more gripe while this cranky old toaster is "in the mood".....

Dris stated that he didn't think a class action lawsuit was valid regarding hard disc makers and stated capacity. Dris, when you buy a 1 gig stick of memory for a machine and find out it is actually 970MB, let's see if your tune changes. *snicker*

Above was relayed with light lite-heartedness you understand but you don't -even- want to know -how- a particular drive manufacturer devised their "math".

[HAL9000]

I agree.. while going a bit off topic, I see in one of the PCM articles about ad blocking being stealing... sorry, if I block an ad that I'm not going to click on anyway, but I don't want to see it, I haven't taken anything, but if I buy something that is 100GB and receive less than that, that is stealing from me.

[Toaster]

Ah, understood Hal. I use "Seamonkey" and kill all non-relevant materials.
Still, memory being RAM or flash -could- be calculated with the -new- math, I wonder how many will gripe and groan. Also, tell Dris not to pick his nose during his shoots, looks bad bud....*snicker*. Regarding that episode, I believe it was the one regarding browser defaults but I may be mistaken. In all fairness, he didn't mine for the "nasal ore" but he did "swipe a pick".

[glc]

That part of the site and the forums are 2 different sides of the house. You get to pick on Dris and his gang for that, not me and my staff!