Q When my shack computer is booting up a quick message flashes by concerning my hard drive. It is something about my drive being SMART compatible. What does this mean?
A SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. It is a feature of the hard drive that allows it to give advance warning of certain types of failures. Think of it as the hard drive reporting on the state of its health. The SMART concept seems terrific, until you realize that the drive manufacturers set the SMART parameters. That is, they decide how the relative health of the hard drive will be judged and reported. It isn’t in their best interests to have hard drives calling in sick, so to speak, at the drop of a hat. The Doctor has seen some very sick hard drives reporting 100% health, so the value of SMART is questionable at best. If your BIOS supports SMART you can usually enable it in your SETUP, but I wouldn’t expect too much. A religious devotion to backing up your drive on a regular basis is still the best insurance. After all, there are only two types of hard drives—those that have failed and those that haven’t . . . yet.
From From QST June 1999
