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Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART)

In an effort to help users avoid data loss, some drive manufacturers are now incorporating logic into their drives that acts as an "early warning system" for pending drive problems. This system is called Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology or SMART. The hard disk's integrated controller monitors various aspects of its own performance and makes available status information to any software that wants to probe the drive and look at it. One popular program that will monitor this status is Symantec's Norton Utilities suite.

SMART works by monitoring certain performance characteristics inside the disk, and looking for trends that indicate a gradual worsening in reliability that could indicate an imminent failure. The actual way that SMART is implemented is usually a function of what the manufacturer wants to do, and the specifics of the drive itself. One example of what SMART could do is that it could monitor the average number of ECC error corrections it must perform per sector read from the disk. Based on statistical knowledge and examining trends over time, it could be possible to predict the formation of bad sectors or total drive failure.

The value of SMART is still questionable. The problem with it is that it really cannot detect many types of drive failures. Also, consider that a drive showing up with a SMART code indicating pending failure during the warranty period of the drive, will mean an expensive replacement for the manufacturer. For this reason, I think it likely that they will make the SMART routines pretty conservative, to make sure that hard disks that don't need replacing aren't. This will limit the usefulness of the technique compared to what it would be if they were more aggressive in detecting these failures.

I sort of view SMART as something that is nice to have, but not something that should be relied upon too heavily. It certainly is no replacement for proper hard disk care and maintenance, or routine and current backups.

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