S.M.A.R.T Hard drive BIOS Enable or disable??

[mikepg]

I've got a question here for everyone. For those of you who don't know, the S.M.A.R.T option is somthing that is enabled or disabled within the system BIOS. What it does is monitor the hard drive to see if there is any kind of problem with the hardware. I'm not sure what all goes into the monitoring, but I've seen it work before.

If there is something wrong withthe hard drive, when you boot the PC, there is a message the comes up and pauses the PC for user intereaction before it continues to boot. This is a critical point at which the operator needs to make the decison whether to boot or get help. Most of the time data can be saved or recovered if caught in time. Some people choose to ignore it and the lose all their data.

At the company at ehich I used to work, employees chose not to bother with the warning and then ***** to Info Sercives when their HD is toast. Reems to be the norm everwhere though. I actuallt encountered about 90% of our PC' not haveing this feature turned on (which I think is a mistake). My manager seems to think that is causes conflicts within the machine. We are running on a domain off of a 2003 server, and 95% PC's are XP Pro and the rest are 2000 Pro. Is there anything to my manager's concern about enableing this feature? I think it could save a lot of head aches in the future. Please let me know if there is anything to his claims of conflicts. Thanks a lot!

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Your manager is a dumb@$$ and S.M.A.R.T. is the best thing since we know what

 

[mikepg]

Thank you. That is what I thought too. Just about every Idea I brought up during my employment there was never a good idea to him . Wanna see a picture or that wire closet of our switch room?

 

[OIDanTheManIO]

Your manager is a dumb@$$ and S.M.A.R.T. is the best thing since we know what

I have it disabled. It's practically useless. You enable it when you think that your hard drive is dying on you. It alerta you when your hard drive is dying so that you can migrate its data before it goes fully dead on you.

-Dan The Man

 

[mikepg]

I have it disabled. It's practically useless. You enable it when you think that your hard drive is dying on you. It alerta you when your hard drive is dying so that you can migrate its data before it goes fully dead on you.

-Dan The Man

I understand that it doesn't need to be enabled all the time, especiall if you are using a new HD. I've had cases where a HD can go bad within a year. Also, I'm talking about 400 PC that have many different users per PC. It is very hard to monitor these and turn the feature on as needed, so the only practical thing to do is to enable it when the PC is rolled out. Also, half of the users, don't know what right clicking is on the mouse. very untrained users make for a lot of hardware/software issues. These computers get turen off all the time w/o being shut down properly.

If you can think of another way to enable them with out it being on all the time, I'm up for suggestions.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

I have it disabled. It's practically useless. You enable it when you think that your hard drive is dying on you. It alerta you when your hard drive is dying so that you can migrate its data before it goes fully dead on you.

-Dan The Man

But how do you know when your HD is going to die?

 

[mikepg]

That is exactly my point. If you knew when the hard drive was going to go bad, then there would be no point for SMART. If you work in the IT department of a coorperation, then there is really no other choice than to enable SMART when the PC is rolled out. This is my opinion at least. Please tell me if I am wring here.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

You should allways have SMART enabled so you can buy a back up drive and move all your current data to the new drive in time....

 

[psman]

SMART=DUMB there is no difference on or off .
if your hard wants to lose data it will no matter what your option is i had a hard issue back in time and this option did not help

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

you need a brain, it is only meant to warn you of a possible hard drive failure.... its not meant to prevent the hard drive from losing data at all.... its just there to warn and help you back up in an emergency......