HDD Health using SMART

Dave Rave · Post by **Dave Rave** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 8:27 am

with all the dramas

that dying hard drives cause, how many people are using any utility to monitor the drives ?

I was reading something, somewhere, and the drives internal stats and SMART was mentioned, and I thought, that makes sense.

so now I have HDD Health running on my machines.
http://www.panterasoft.com

I think it is a good thing, any casual(ly sly) remarks ?

Post by **Derek** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 6:25 pm

1) It eats up some resources.

2) I don't use it.

(That's all I can think of at the moment)

HAL6000 · Post by **HAL6000** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 7:50 pm

IMO drive SMART is stupid

Most of the time I upgrade to newer bgger drives long before the expected MTBF can creep up on me.

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 7:53 pm

I've never used it, and never heard of a case of it helping.

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 12:09 am

true

i've got a drive now i feel is nearing it's MTBF period

i'll upgrade it before i try to save it

it's only an 18GB

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 5:49 am

I got three defective Fujitsu MPGs, which still show good SMART values. On the contrary, my fourth MPG´s power-on time count is in the red, and the drive still works like a charm.

In the storagereview.com forums I once read that it is even possible to reset the SMART data.

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 6:23 am

Here it is: http://forums.storagereview.net/index.p ... c=5592&hl=

"If you want to remove all unrecoverable errors indicated in SMART reports (for example), try to execute this sequence of ATA commands:
1) SECURITY ERASE PREPARE
2) FORMAT UNIT - documented cmd 0xF7. Use 0x11 in Features register to MERGE Grown defects (G-List) to Primary Defect List (P-list). You lost all of your information on drive, but after this drive looks as NEW

"

I don´t know how to do that, but it sounds like an explanation for many old-but-oh!-not-so-good harddrives on ebay;)