[bohdanz]

I'm seeing "S.M.A.R.T. failing" on my startup hard drive (I have two others in my G4 tower for video work.)

Do I need to replace my startup disk ASAP or can I resintall Panther onto one of the other existing hard drives and make it up the startup disk? (They're affixed on an ATA/66 controller cable.)

Thanks very much.

I know the 'failing' part doesn't bode well and would rather take action now then lose everything later.

[Scotttheking]

Backup and replace the drive. Now.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by bohdanz:
I'm seeing "S.M.A.R.T. failing" on my startup hard drive (I have two others in my G4 tower for video work.)

Do I need to replace my startup disk ASAP or can I resintall Panther onto one of the other existing hard drives and make it up the startup disk? (They're affixed on an ATA/66 controller cable.)

SMART is the hard drive itself failing its own diagnostics. This is very serious. Do as Scott says and back up now. If the drive is under warranty, get it replaced. If not, toss it and buy a replacement.

[Cadaver]

I had a PC which was showing a SMART error. Data corruption occurred within 1 week (all backed up, fortunately).
Back up your stuff and get a new drive!

[reader50]

Originally posted by bohdanz:
I'm seeing "S.M.A.R.T. failing" on my startup hard drive ...

1. Go to newegg and find the largest WD-JB that you feel like buying. Or go to a different vendor and/or get a different drive brand.
2. Copy everything off the failing drive.
3. Open a south-facing window. It's important to be sure the window faces directly south. Remove the screen if there is one, make sure the drapes are open.
4. Place the old HD on a low object in front of the window, such as a shoe box or golf tee.
5. Put on your heavy work boots, the steel-toe ones.
6. See just how far that drive can really go.

Seriously, the above posters are right. The drive itself believes it's failing, and it has good reason for believing that. It's living on borrowed time, and so is any of your data still on that drive.

[-Q-]

While reader 50 has the most...creative method I've heard of to deal with a failing drive, it's definitely time to replace that drive. I have to say, this is the first time I've heard of SMART actually being useful to someone - usually the drive just fails catastrophically and they're SOL if they don't have any backups. So don't look this gift horse in the mouth - backup and replace that drive pronto!

[Sarc]

SMART is actually very useful.
I never saw it used on the Mac though.

Where did you see/get an alert that SMART was failing ?

[tooki]

Well, Xserves monitor SMART, as does DiskWarrior 3.

tooki

[kehno]

Originally posted by Sarc:
SMART is actually very useful.
I never saw it used on the Mac though.

Where did you see/get an alert that SMART was failing ?

You can check SMART status with Disk Utility. Select your harddrive from the list on the left, and in the bottom of the window you can see line "S.M.A.R.T. status: ..."

[GORDYmac]

I learned the hard way. BACK UP NOW!!!

[RevEvs]

Just to echo everyone else, If you think a HD is failing then backup! if not be prepared for the consequences!

revs

[Sarc]

Originally posted by kehno:
You can check SMART status with Disk Utility. Select your harddrive from the list on the left, and in the bottom of the window you can see line "S.M.A.R.T. status: ..."

yes, I know, but ppl. don't usually check that.
Most PC's check SMART status at startup, so you get an alert before Windows actually boots.

[Kenneth]

I just fired up Disk Utility and noticed that my second hard drive shown the same.
I put my PowerMac G4 (FW800) on 24/7, the problem hard drive is located on the ATA/66 bus and set to put disk to sleep for inactive under the system preference.

I use that drive mainly for video and all my iTunes songs on it. Actually, it doesn't act strange or make weird noisy.

I have an identical drive as my boot drive without any problem.

The problem drive is purchased in July/2003 and the other same make and model back in Aug/2002. The "older" drive is still working and the "newer" one doesn't.

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

Originally posted by Sarc:
yes, I know, but ppl. don't usually check that.
Most PC's check SMART status at startup, so you get an alert before Windows actually boots.

When I boot into OS9, Hard Drive Toolkit checks the SMART status when it loads the extensions.

[cmoney]

My problem is DiskWarrior is saying SMART is operating fine, but I've got a corrupted hard drive on my new 1 month old G5! The drive is an additional 250GB Maxtor drive I added and it's already been corrupted after 3 weeks. Anyone know of any "known" G5 SATA issues or could it be heat?

Drive no longer mounts on desktop, and the first time I ran DiskWarrior, it couldn't replace the directory. I'm now at work and left it running, I guess the best I can hope for now is to preview the drive and copy as much off it as I can.

I swore off Maxtor drives since I've had 4 out of 4 in the past 5 years that went bad, but thought maybe they've improved. Oh well, serves me right.

If SMART is saying the drive is fine, will Maxtor give me grief for trying to replace the drive? It's only a few weeks old...

[Person Man]

Originally posted by cmoney:
My problem is DiskWarrior is saying SMART is operating fine, but I've got a corrupted hard drive on my new 1 month old G5! The drive is an additional 250GB Maxtor drive I added and it's already been corrupted after 3 weeks. Anyone know of any "known" G5 SATA issues or could it be heat?

Drive no longer mounts on desktop, and the first time I ran DiskWarrior, it couldn't replace the directory. I'm now at work and left it running, I guess the best I can hope for now is to preview the drive and copy as much off it as I can.

I swore off Maxtor drives since I've had 4 out of 4 in the past 5 years that went bad, but thought maybe they've improved. Oh well, serves me right.

If SMART is saying the drive is fine, will Maxtor give me grief for trying to replace the drive? It's only a few weeks old...

It could always be the data on the drive that's corrupted. Try reformatting and see if the problem goes away.

[bbales]

bohdanz, let us know what happens -- such as, did you get the drive backed up and replaced in time?

[OreoCookie]

Although suggested by many people, once again:

Bacup up. NOW. Replace the harddrive ASAP. Don't do any more serious work on that machine, except for the backup of course. If you have important (`personal' data on it, wipe the hd using secure rm or secure empty the trash).

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Although suggested by many people, once again:

Bacup up. NOW. Replace the harddrive ASAP. Don't do any more serious work on that machine, except for the backup of course. If you have important (`personal' data on it, wipe the hd using secure rm or secure empty the trash).

[bstone]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
If you have important (`personal' data on it, wipe the hd using secure rm or secure empty the trash).

Or just take it outside and smash it with a big ass rock like I do.

[Kenneth]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
Or just take it outside and smash it with a big ass rock like I do.

Not for me...

Since my hard drive is still in warranty... Western Digital replaced mine and I have to send the bad drive back to them or they will bill me.

[chabig]

Originally posted by Sarc:
yes, I know, but ppl. don't usually check that.
Most PC's check SMART status at startup, so you get an alert before Windows actually boots.

I use Macaroni (although cron would work too) to run this script every day:

Code:
set status to do shell script "diskutil info disk0 | grep SMART"
if status is not "   SMART Status:       Verified" then
	do shell script "echo -n 'Disk last checked on ';date;echo SMART status: Problem Detected!"
	tell application "Finder"
		display dialog "A hardware problem has been detected on your hard drive:" & return & return & status
	end tell
else
	do shell script "echo -n 'Disk last checked on ';date;echo SMART status: Verified."
end if

If the S.M.A.R.T. status of my hard drive is anything other than normal, it pops up an alert dialog.

More scripts are here

Chris

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
Or just take it outside and smash it with a big ass rock like I do.

I read in the New Scintist in a article with a cyber crime detective, that micorwaving is also a good method for losing data permanently... And also losing your microwave.

[cmoney]

Well, ran DiskWarrior on the drive to no avail. It actually crashed once right before I tried to write the new directory to the drive. I was able to salvage some of the data though, using its Preview function.

The real help though came from Prosoft's Data Rescue X. That program worked great! I've got about 98% of the data from the drive now and should be fine once I find the time to restore my apps. Haven't heard much about this program so here's one vote for it. It's not gonna repair your drive, but you'll be able to pull stuff off and onto a new drive.

I found out there was a lightening storm while I was on vacation and that was probably the cause of the problem. SMART is still reporting the drive is okay though. I'm gonna contact Maxtor about getting it replaced under warranty.

Also, while everyone's saying backup backup backup, I wonder what everyone's backing up onto?! With 2 250GB drives, finding an affordable backup medium isn't really possible. Ok, I don't have 500GBs worth backing up, but easily do have 100GBs of data, including previous projects, videos, photos, etc. DVD-R is essentially as useless as CD-R and tape drives this size run into the $750-$1000 range (although Lacie has some AIT I drives at $249 refurb, though I don't know if I want to trust my last line of defense to a refurb tape drive). I'm -> <- this close to buying Micronet's Platinum RAID 5 FW800 system which has 600GB for $1900.

[Squozen]

I back up to my Linux servers. I figure the chance of my server HD and laptop HD dying at the same time is pretty slim.