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The last few days I get a message on startup that says:

S.M.A.R.T. status BAD. Backup and restore.


What is that, and what do I do about it?

Thanks!

S.M.A.R.T monitoring is a feature of your BIOS, and your harddrive, that
allows the system to monitor several parameters of harddrive operation. If
some of those critical parameters go out of tolerance, then you will get a
warning, such as the one you saw. The idea is to try and predict harddrive
failure before actual and total failure and data loss occurs. When S.M.A.R.T
is telling you to back up your data, it's because your drive may well be on
the verge of failure. I would heed it's advice and back up your data.
S.M.A.R.T isn't perfect, and can give you a warning that turns out to be
wrong, but in my experience, it's correct more often than incorrect.



"Erskin" <> wrote in message
news:4QCGc.47$...
> The last few days I get a message on startup that says:
>
> S.M.A.R.T. status BAD. Backup and restore.
>
>
> What is that, and what do I do about it?
>
> Thanks!
>
>

My experience is that S.M.A.R.T. failures are more often 'false
negatives' than false positives. That is, it's more often that the drive
will fail without a warning message than that you'll get a warning
message that's incorrect.

Thor wrote:
> S.M.A.R.T monitoring is a feature of your BIOS, and your harddrive, that
> allows the system to monitor several parameters of harddrive operation. If
> some of those critical parameters go out of tolerance, then you will get a
> warning, such as the one you saw. The idea is to try and predict harddrive
> failure before actual and total failure and data loss occurs. When S.M.A.R.T
> is telling you to back up your data, it's because your drive may well be on
> the verge of failure. I would heed it's advice and back up your data.
> S.M.A.R.T isn't perfect, and can give you a warning that turns out to be
> wrong, but in my experience, it's correct more often than incorrect.
>
>
>
> "Erskin" <> wrote in message
> news:4QCGc.47$...
>
>>The last few days I get a message on startup that says:
>>
>>S.M.A.R.T. status BAD. Backup and restore.
>>
>>
>>What is that, and what do I do about it?
>>
>>Thanks!
>>
>>
>
>
>

"Calvin Crumrine" <> wrote in message
news:...
> My experience is that S.M.A.R.T. failures are more often 'false
> negatives' than false positives. That is, it's more often that the drive
> will fail without a warning message than that you'll get a warning
> message that's incorrect.

S.M.A.R.T isn't capable of monitoring every type of harddrive failures, thus
it is common to see a drive fail without warning. Sometimes, the failure is
sudden and catastrophic, and even though it might monitor something involved
in the failure, S.M.A.R.T doesn't necessarily always have an opportunity to
warn the user before access to the drive is cut off.

Thor wrote:
> "Calvin Crumrine" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>
>>My experience is that S.M.A.R.T. failures are more often 'false
>>negatives' than false positives. That is, it's more often that the drive
>>will fail without a warning message than that you'll get a warning
>>message that's incorrect.
>
>
> S.M.A.R.T isn't capable of monitoring every type of harddrive failures, thus
> it is common to see a drive fail without warning. Sometimes, the failure is
> sudden and catastrophic, and even though it might monitor something involved
> in the failure, S.M.A.R.T doesn't necessarily always have an opportunity to
> warn the user before access to the drive is cut off.
>
>
>
You're right. I should have said 'S.M.A.R.T. drive failures' as the
failure (probably) wasn't in S.M.A.R.T. itself. I guess what I was
trying to say is that while you're right that one should pay attention
to an S.M.A.R.T. warning of an impending drive failure, one should not
rely on S.M.A.R.T. to provide that warning. As you point out, many
failures are either of the type S.M.A.R.T. doesn't monitor or occur too
quickly for the warning to be displayed (or acted upon).

"Calvin Crumrine" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Thor wrote:
> > "Calvin Crumrine" <> wrote in message
> > news:...
> >
> >>My experience is that S.M.A.R.T. failures are more often 'false
> >>negatives' than false positives. That is, it's more often that the drive
> >>will fail without a warning message than that you'll get a warning
> >>message that's incorrect.
> >
> >
> > S.M.A.R.T isn't capable of monitoring every type of harddrive failures,
thus
> > it is common to see a drive fail without warning. Sometimes, the failure
is
> > sudden and catastrophic, and even though it might monitor something
involved
> > in the failure, S.M.A.R.T doesn't necessarily always have an opportunity
to
> > warn the user before access to the drive is cut off.
> >
> >
> >
> You're right. I should have said 'S.M.A.R.T. drive failures' as the
> failure (probably) wasn't in S.M.A.R.T. itself. I guess what I was
> trying to say is that while you're right that one should pay attention
> to an S.M.A.R.T. warning of an impending drive failure, one should not
> rely on S.M.A.R.T. to provide that warning. As you point out, many
> failures are either of the type S.M.A.R.T. doesn't monitor or occur too
> quickly for the warning to be displayed (or acted upon).

one feature of S.M.A.R.T that is worth checking from time to time is the
reallocated sector count. Periodic checking with a windows-based S.M.A.R.T
monitoring tool can reveal growing numbers of bad sectors long before they
reach the point of initiating a warning via the BIOS.