SMART Monitoring

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jack Gillis
  • Start date Start date
J

Jack Gillis

I'm sure this question reveals my non-smart knowledge on the subject so
I will just duck my head and ask anyway.

Does Microsoft have a S.M.A.R.T monitoring program within XP of
downloadable from their vast archives? If not, can someone recommend
one. My HD's are Maxtor and their SMART program doesn't seem to want to
work quite right with XP.

Thank you very much.
 
Thank you for replying.
As a matter of fact, I cannot find any way of doing it in my BIOS. I've
looked at EVERY entry and can find nothing that applies. Perhaps it is
there as a default. I say that because I do have, in addition to the
Maxtor System Agent, Active Smart from Ariolic Software and it reports
all sorts of information on my Western Digital (Disk 0) and my Maxtor
(Disk 1). I guess I may have to spring for the $30 to make it permanent
but before I do that I thought I would see if there were any others
anywhere around worth looking at.

BTW, the BIOS is a Phoenix LTD 6.00 with a date of 8/06/2002. Haven't
found an update later than that.
 
Hi Jack -

Many motherboards have S.M.A.R.T enabled in their BIOS by default -- and
there's no way to turn it off. This is probably the case with yours given
that Active Smart is showing you information about your drives from the
internal S.M.A.R.T monitoring.

There are many system information programs that will display S.M.A.R.T.
information. My favorite is AIDA32, which displays more information about
your system than you would probably care to know. AIDA32 is available free
from http://www.aida32.hu (and if you register on the website, you'll
receive notification when new versions are released). There are three
versions of AIDA32 available on the downloads page. The differences between
the versions is explained on a link off the downloads page (I've found that
the Personal System Information version meets the needs of most stand-alone
system users).

Jef


| Thank you for replying.
| As a matter of fact, I cannot find any way of doing it in my BIOS. I've
| looked at EVERY entry and can find nothing that applies. Perhaps it is
| there as a default. I say that because I do have, in addition to the
| Maxtor System Agent, Active Smart from Ariolic Software and it reports
| all sorts of information on my Western Digital (Disk 0) and my Maxtor
| (Disk 1). I guess I may have to spring for the $30 to make it permanent
| but before I do that I thought I would see if there were any others
| anywhere around worth looking at.
|
| BTW, the BIOS is a Phoenix LTD 6.00 with a date of 8/06/2002. Haven't
| found an update later than that.
|
|
| Cari (MS-MVP) wrote:
| > Do you have SMART monitoring enabled in the BIOS?
| >
| > Cari
| > www.coribright.com
| >
| > | >> I'm sure this question reveals my non-smart knowledge on the subject
| >> so I will just duck my head and ask anyway.
| >>
| >> Does Microsoft have a S.M.A.R.T monitoring program within XP of
| >> downloadable from their vast archives? If not, can someone recommend
| >> one. My HD's are Maxtor and their SMART program doesn't seem to
| >> want to work quite right with XP.
| >>
| >> Thank you very much.
|
|
 
Hi Jef

It's me again. I just dl'd AIDA 32 and installed it. You were right
about the amount of information. One quick question. Will the SMART
feature continually monitor the HD activity and produce an alarm of some
sort if things begin to go out of whack?

Thanks again.
 
Hi Jack -

Since AIDA32 doesn't run all the time, there's no way for it to give you an
alert if you have problems pending with one or more of your hard drives.
The only time you'll find actual real-time alerts is when you either have
the functionality built into your BIOS to provide the alerts (though I've
personally never encountered a BIOS that did this) or with an application
that runs in the background all the time.

Best bet is to keep in mind to check your system information application
from time to time or, if you can't remember, seek out an application that
runs in the background on your system (keeping in mind, of course, that this
will consume a small amount of system resources).

Jef


| Hi Jef
|
| It's me again. I just dl'd AIDA 32 and installed it. You were right
| about the amount of information. One quick question. Will the SMART
| feature continually monitor the HD activity and produce an alarm of some
| sort if things begin to go out of whack?
|
| Thanks again.
|
| Jef Norton wrote:
| > Hi Jack -
| >
| > Many motherboards have S.M.A.R.T enabled in their BIOS by default --
| > and there's no way to turn it off. This is probably the case with
|
|
 
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