Okay, how does a fool get any warning of an impending hard disk failure?
What do you run to hopefully get some warning?
Nothing. As I said, some hard drive failures are sudden and complete.
I lost a drive once. I had SMART on. It warned me something was wrong with
my drive. I took heed of the warning but instead of backing it up, I ran
the manufacturers diags, It passed. I ran it again, it passed. I did
nothing. The next day I got another SMART warning. I ran the diags and it
died in the diags test. Lost data.
That's probably what I would have done.
So the only fool was me not backing up first on SMART warnings.
No, the only fool was you not backing up your data.
If I have SMART on, I have one tool to tell me of potential problems. I am
relying on it as well as common sense in listening to my PC for whirring,
click, grinding noise etc whenever I use it. I also run Norton defrag and
disk doctor a few times a year. I also ghost my drive as backup a couple of
times a year.
Then you are a fool. Nothing can reliably predict hard drive failures.
The average hard drive lasts three to five years. So if you don't back up
your data, you take a 2% chance every month, roughly, that your hard drive
will fail.
I really have a hard time understanding why some think it is so stupid to
use a tool that attempts to predict failure real-time without the user
running a tool when there is nothing else as far as I know.
It's perfectly reasonable. After all, it might predict a failure. But
it's sheer idiocy to rely upon it to predict failures.
You say it has no overhead, even if it did I would still run it as the
potential benefit of a hardware failure being predicted outweighs the
performance hit if any.
Certainly. It's free and it might help. The only risk is that you might
rely upon it. So long as you know not to do that, it can't hurt and it could
help.
I am not saying SMART is anywhere near IBM mainframe drives of the 80's.
But it is a tool that can be used along with whatever other techniques to
avoid data loss. No where was it said that it was the sole tool used to
predict failure. It is just something to help when drives start failing.
And all I said is that you'd have to be a fool to rely upon it to
predict hardware failures.
Backups are the only safety net that is reliable if a good recovery plan is
in place.
Agreed.
So why is there such a strong attack on SMART in this newsgroup and by some
techs here. I am really curious.
Why are you asking in a reply to me? Do you disagree with anything I
said in the message you are replying to:
DS
