SMART reporter started warning me about one of my drives a few minutes ago.
Last time it happened, a different drive than the one it was warning me about failed . . .
anyone else received erroneous warnings?
Thx . . .

Black,

It may not be erroneous. The drive could be on its way out but not quite there yet. Hope you have your data backed up just in case the drive does in fact fail.

Robert

Yes.

There is a very informative white paper on the subject of S.M.A.R.T. reporting published last year by a couple of the tech guys at Google. Of course a Google search should turn it up...

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Aloha, Ken


“I have developed significant attachments to several members even though I wouldn't recognize them if I sat next to one on a park bench. I'm often tempted when in an airport to walk around, hollering "The Løpe", to see if anyone other than the Homeland Security people will acknowledge me. ” - The Løpe

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us." Justice Robert Jackson

Thanks, of course I'm backing it up right now. Nothing really important on there anyways.

Thanks . . .[www.engadget.com]
It doesn't really answer my question, but the opposite question, i.e. do drives fail without SMART warning (which I assumed they do, othwise you'd hear crowing about watching your SMART status up and down forum-land rather than chides for not backing up).
I wonder if this may mean =another= of my drives is about to fail, as last time?

I have a 400GB ATA drive that has been reporting a SMART failure since roughly 3 months after it was installed. The drive is still working perfectly after more than 2 years.

The only real downside to this is that Apples Disk Utility will refuse to do anything to the drive it is reporting any kind of smart failure. Thankfully Drive Genius & DiskWarrior don't seem to mind.

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Aloha, Ken


“I have developed significant attachments to several members even though I wouldn't recognize them if I sat next to one on a park bench. I'm often tempted when in an airport to walk around, hollering "The Løpe", to see if anyone other than the Homeland Security people will acknowledge me. ” - The Løpe

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us." Justice Robert Jackson

The drive currently reporting as bad is a Maxtor 100 GB 5400 RPM which I bought open box at Microcenter I think in late 1999 (to be a music server in my Starmax/G3).
It had a meltdown early on but has been solid ever since.
I wonder if I placed it in the same slot as the drive that failed previously? (The hitachi 80 GB which came stock in my "final" MDD?) I should start noticing . . .

This is the real problem we begin to face as these drives keep climbing in size.

Can you afford to have a 1TB drive without another one to back it up? And if your install base is only 40-50GB, and you have other huge things --- then what? Wait for BluRay blanks to not be $25 each?

Funny -- DL dvds are starting to look reasonable, vs 10x or more for 2x the space!

I've been trying to go nuts keeping things burned since I got the MacBook -- using Disk Catalog (comes with Toast or you can get it alone). GREAT program -- search it like iTunes and it tells you what DVD or HD your file is on.

I started burning with 2008 - 001. So far I'm at 30, and there is no end in site. I've also been moving ancient (year 2000) CDs to DVD, that includes all my previously moved FLOPPIES from the 68000 days! I got 11 CDs onto a single 4.7 DVD the other day.

That whole drive failure thing is frightening, and really quite costly, unless you manage to only back up your mail and a rapidly changing "documents" or whatever folder that is designated.

I'm beginning to think the entire User Folder is game -- I just don't want to be duping ANYTHING that an installer is going to stick in there when re-created.

Is everyone going to a "clone" or just a "changed data only" style back-up scheme?

Additional info - I use SMARTReporter, a background app that continuously monitors the internal HD SMART data. Disk Utility only reports when it's running which it's something I normally do. SMARTReporter has various options. I have mind set with a small green dot in the menu bar to indicate "all's well".

What is SmartReporter part of? DW? TechTool? Free Standing?

Quote
yeoman
Additional info - I use SMARTReporter, a background app that continuously monitors the internal HD SMART data. Disk Utility only reports when it's running which it's something I normally do. SMARTReporter has various options. I have mind set with a small green dot in the menu bar to indicate "all's well".

Yeah, me too.
Poo, it's stand-alone freeware.

So, I got the drive cloned over, no problem, and it seems to work fine, but disk utility won't touch it (not even to erase/reformat) because of the SMART status. I don't have any other repair apps handy.
Anyone know of anything free, at least so I can "clean" the drive before it ends up on a dusty shelf?