How smart is SMART - for hard drives?

[tilneford]

Last summer while on vacation, I fried my OEM harddrive in an x60s putting the laptop into its sleeve thinking it was going into hibernation when some driver issue in WinXP stopped it from doing so. I replaced it with a then, new Hitachi 320G 7200rpm drive. I use the laptop every day in multiple locations on several floors to access data located elsewhere on a LAN. I think I was lazy, on more than one occasion, and went up or down the stairs without even putting it into standby. I started having intermittent problems and learned PC-Doctor in the Lenovo Toolbox is saying the hard drive is going bad. I ran chkdsk /r several times and the computer seems now to be working fine. My guess is that the hard drive heads whacked the platters. If that is really the cause, then should not the unaffected part of the hard drive still be fine? I've ran PCTools again and it still says that the drive fails the SMART Extended Self Test and also fails the Surface Scan Test 1. But, it passes the Surface Scan Test 2. So, how smart is SMART? Does it distinguish between errors on sections of the harddrive which have been removed from use by the OS by running chkdsk, or is it going to just look at every section of the harddrive and if it sees any problem, it is going to fail the hard drive regardless of the reason for the failure. I have regular image backups and am not worried about data loss as I use the x60s almost like a netbook since all important data resides elsewhere. How much of a gamble am I taking by not immediately replacing the hard drive? I realize there is some law of murphy which will cause the hard drive to fail at the least opportune time, but I'd rather not buy another hard drive at this time. Any thoughts?

[RealBlackStuff]

I don't know the answer to how smart SMART is, I've never relied on it, nor had a HD where SMART warned if imminent failure.
But with your type of running around, you'd be well advised to buy an SSD hard disk, no moving parts, hence no damage from carrying it to and fro.
There's one with a great discount here in the Market forum: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=74150

[Marin85]

My limited experience with HDs tells me that the SMART data are not always conclusive as to whether the HD has started going bad or not. I have seen both drives with excellent SMART data that have failed on the next day and HDs with questionable SMART data that have lived quite long. Nevertheless, if I was you, I would take some precautions. Doing a backup is IMO a MUST, because the changes reported in SMART may indeed indicate something going on, and if something is really going on, it´s definitely something bad... No rocket science here.

Good luck

Marin

EDIT: good -> bad

[tilneford]

RealBlackStuff said:

... I've never relied on it, nor had a HD where SMART warned if imminent failure.

Me neither. I thought SMART was supposed to warn somehow, but, unless I manually run a drive test, like here, SMART never warns of anything.

But with your type of running around, you'd be well advised to buy an SSD hard disk...

That is the plan which I wanted to implement in a year or two - not now. When this first started happening I did a quick review of SSDs, read a TomsHardware review of 6 new drives and received the impression that SSDs are still exhibiting teething pains. I use to like living on the cutting edge, but over time, I now appreciate something a little less sharp.

The SSD you referenced in the marketplace does look nice. Do you know its size? I've been running the Hitachi 320G by using a partition of only 80G, so I really do not need a large (by today's standard) drive.

[tilneford]

Marin85 said:

No rocket science here.

Unfortunately, you're right. I sometimes think I am ready to apply for the position of Scrooge, counting my dwindling pennies.

I appreciate your comments and those of RealBlackStuff. Thanks.

[RealBlackStuff]

The advertised SSD is 64GB

[carbon_unit]

I had a customer bring in a computer this week where SMART was warning of impending hard drive failure, Press F1 to continue.
We were able to clone to a new bigger hard drive with no data loss at all. The customer couldn't even tell we installed a new drive except for all the new empty space and the lack of error messages at bootup. That was the first time I have seen SMARt actually warn before a crash. We get a couple drives a week that just die with no warning.