[Ti] Just how accurate is S.M.A.R.T?

[Chris Olson]

On Apr 18, 2005, at 11:06 AM, robert at elastica.com wrote:

> What are the chances of S.M.A.R.T. status being reported incorrectly?

Very good.  Part of the S.M.A.R.T. test is drive spinup time.  If the 
drive spun up slow during boot or coming from sleep for some odd reason 
(machine being moved and head parked or something similar during 
spinup) it'll inaccurately report a failing drive.  S.M.A.R.T. 
monitoring isn't really done on the fly for all tests.

I'd benchmark the drive with Xbench to see if it develops a problem 
during heavy usage, run the AHT on it, and if it checks OK, not worry 
about it.  That still doesn't mean a person shouldn't keep regular 
backups.
--
Chris