On Wednesday, December 29, 1999 3:14 PM,  Ian Newman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi All
> I have seen for ages when I boot up that  H/D  S.M.A.R.T  capability is
disabled.  Can anyone enlighten me as to what this means??

Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) is a major
step to the truly fault tolerant computing environment. As all of us
 know that the Hard Disk Drive's, (HDD) in our servers, workstations
 or even home computers hold vast amounts of critical data. The HDD
 also has the greatest potential for failure of any component in a
 system. To date we could check a system for "soft errors" like cross
 linked files or lost clusters, we could scan for viruses and check
the surface of the drives platters for defects, but there was really
 no reliable way to detect hardware failure. Of course after the fact
there are some diagnostics to check the drive out, but alas, our
 precious data is gone. S.M.A.R.T. on the other hand monitors the
drive's hardware performance with drive specific tests on the
controller. When a fault is detected, a notification is given that
 the hardware may fail and all data should be backed up immediately
 and the drive sent for repair or replacement. S.M.A.R.T. Compliant
 drives are the norm, and have been shipping for several years now,
 and almost all drives available today are S.M.A.R.T. compliant.
 S.M.A.R.T. is defined and endorsed by the Small Form Factor (SFF)
 committee which includes Compaq Computer Corporation, Hitachi, Ltd.,  IBM
Storage Products Company, Maxtor Corporation, Quantum
 Corporation, Seagate Technology, Toshiba Corporation and Western  Digital
Corporation among others. In fact, IBM has shipped nearly 3 million
S.M.A.R.T. compliant drives which have logged over 20 billion hours.
S.M.A.R.T. is an industry standard reliability            prediction
indicator for both IDE/ATA and SCSI HDD. What S.M.A.R.T. means to the end
user is simple. Now the single most
 important device in the system can be accurately monitored for
faults and potential failure so critical data can be moved before
 the drive fails. Intelli-SMART takes the monitoring to a new level.
 Now you can have every drive in your organization or on your network
 monitored 24 hours a day for things that may lead to a crash. If a
fault is detected, you are notified with various local alerting
options or you can enable remote notifications via e-mail or other
 network mail applications with the machine name, the drive ID and
 the time of the first fault.


 Basics of S.M.A.R.T. -- S.M.A.R.T. is actually a failure predication method
based on a device varying from a defined set of thresholds, the idea is an
industry wide continuation of PFA (predictive failure analysis) implemented
and invented by IBM for its mainframe computers. The  first company to
implement S.M.A.R.T. technology on desktop PC's was Compaq Computer with
their DFP (drive failure prediction). A drive  that is S.M.A.R.T. compliant
has a series of tests embedded on the controller of the HDD. The data is
constantly collected and monitored for variations within vendor specific
thresholds. These  tests are designed to predict the impending degradation
or failure of a drive. For instance, if a drive is designed to spin at 3500
RPM and the manufactures threshold is +/- 100 RPM, the drive may be within
threshold for a year, but as the drive ages the RPM's begin  to fluctuate
and before long are at 3300 RPM. Once that happens, an error is logged and a
message is sent to the System Administrator and/or the user. The drive can
now be scheduled for replacement  before the condition gets worse and
becomes catastrophic. The various tests and thresholds that govern pass or
fail are vendor  specific and usually proprietary. The type of failures
monitored by SMART include head and servo issues which result in read and
seek errors, motor failure or bearing problems that result in spin up
problems, excessive bad sectors and thermal testing. The faults are
categorized into predictable and unpredictable, with the
 unpredictable usually being catastrophic. Unpredictable faults are
normally electronics related or caused by static electricity or from
 handling. Testing and data collection can be in an on-line or
 off-line mode. In the on-line mode, data is collected during idle
 times. In the off-line mode the drive is required to respond to
 commands directly from the host and interrupt any operations.
 Intelli-SMART has automatic settings for monitoring the drive in
 on-line status as well as test now button for immediate off-line
 testing and data collection where supported. In order to make the
 implementation of S.M.A.R.T. practical, the system has to be able to
alert the user, or in the case of a network, the system
 administrator of a potential failure. To date the only way to
 utilize the S.M.A.R.T. technology is through the newer BIOS or with
 a simple desktop application that notifies the user of a failure.  Most of
these utilities are manufacturer specific and run under DOS.

To go another  step further, Intelli-SMART runs natively under Windows
95/98/NT and has easy to use messaging options where notifications can be
sent via MS Mail, Lotus Notes or Netscape MAPI. For online systems,
messaging is available over the Internet allowing for alerts to be sent via
email. Intelli-SMART also monitors more than
two physical drives, and in fact can monitor all of the drives in
your system or RAID Array whether they are IDE/ATA, SCSI or both.

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