Re: SMART Failure Predicted?

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siggi wrote:
Hi all,

System: WinXP home, SP2

after having kept running for 6 years without any problem, I get now all of
a sudden this message during booting my PC:

"SMART Failure Predicted on Primary Master: Maxtor 4D060H3
WARNING (blinks!): Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard
drive. A failure may be imminent"

After choosing the option "press F1 to continue", WinXP starts and
everything is as usual. I could even do file defragmentation. After that, I
did backupimages of my harddrive (C:\ and partition F:\).

Questions
*******
* How can I test whether this is really a harddrive problem and not a false
error message?


Download a diagnostic utility from the hard drive's manufacturer's web site and use it to test the hard drive.


* How can the system know that a "failure is imminent" when the harddrive
apparently is working normal?



Having seen the same error, I can only say: "Back up your data
daily until you replace that drive."

On those machines I on which I've seen those S.M.A.R.T. warnings,
catastrophic hard drive failures invariably followed. Some hard
drives lasted for a few days after the warnings first appeared, one
lasted months, and some lasted only minutes. I suppose the one that
lasted months could be considered a false alarm, as months hardly
translate to "imminent," but, on the whole, I'd suggest you take the
warnings seriously.

For the background on S.M.A.R.T., start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology



--

Bruce Chambers

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