S.M.A.R.T. ( whats this ) ?

[Bob Barker Again]

Just recently on booting up the screen stops and tells me the slave disk S.M.A.R.T. has a bad sector back up and replace.

Press F1 to resume.

when I press F1 everything continues to boot up as normal.

Does Anybody know what this is.


BB

[Tony Carter]

Bob, S.M.A.R.T. is an abbreviation for self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology, and as far as I can see from my motherboard manual it is support for S.M.A.R.T. capable hard disk drives. Tony C.

[Trevor Page]

Essentially its a message of impending doom. A non-recoverable error has occurred on the slave disk. The thinking is that this is likely to be the first sign of disk failure. You could be lucky and it might carry on working for years to come ... Or it maight give up the ghost in the next 10 minutes.

Trev

[Bob Barker Again]

Impending doom ?

Does this mean the hard drive is Knac*****d?

And if I carry on using it will it cause any damage to my system.?

Thanks for replies.
BB

[GG]

Hi Bob,
My suggestion is back up anything important on that drive and keep using it.

I have a 20Gig fujitsu drive in one PC which had complained (using S.M.A.R.T)of bad sectors several times about a year ago.

It's still working today

However if the warnings become more regular then it may be about to die.

Try running scandisk, it will mark as bad any sectors it can't read. Run it a couple of times during the next few weeks, if it finds no more then all should be ok.

rgds

GG

[Trevor Page]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bob Barker Again:
Does this mean the hard drive is Knac*****d?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not necessarily. A faulty sector or some faulty sector(s) have been found. Like GG said you might be lucky and the drive will carry on for ages yet.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>
And if I carry on using it will it cause any damage to my system.?
BB<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It won't damage your system, but it could cause you trouble. If the slave disk only contains data files - Captures, projects, documents and the like - then you might have trouble using or accessing these files if further errors occur. If however, you have an operating system or programs installed on the slave disk then the operating system or program could fail which would be a major headache especially if it is not properly backed up. Full re-install on another disk and all the baggage that usually involves - driver updates, service packs, patches and the likes.

HTH Trev

[Bob Barker Again]

Cheers everyone,

I have removed all I need from the drive and I am only using it for capture and only one project at a time. So if it does die Not much to re-do.

When I emptied the Drive I re Formated it thinking this may cure but it didnt.

I am using windows 2000 pro And I dont seem to have scan disk on it.

is this a seperate program to be installed.

Thanks again ,

BB.

[Keitht]

Bob

If you right click on the drive icon, from Explorer or My Computer, and select Properties you should find Tools or something similar.

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Regards

Keith

[GG]

Hi again,

I know the whole point of S.M.A.R.T is to tell you when things arn't looking good. But if the drive seems to be working ok and as you know that it may be becoming a bit flakey, you could turn off S.M.A.R.T in the BIOS for this drive, so you don't get the annoying message every time you boot up.

rgds

GG