S.M.A.R.T (Self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology) in a monitoring system include in computer hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) that detects and reports on various indicators of drives reliability with the intent of enabling the anticipation of hardware failures.
When SMART data indicates a possible data imminent drive failure, software running on the host system may notify the user so store data can be copied to another storage device, preventing data loss, and the falling drive can be replace.
A bad hard drive might be a reason of multiple problems on the computer system. In order to resolve these issue you need to check condition of hard drive. There are various methods available to predict the hard disk drive (HDD) failure that informs us about exact reason behind it. Usually, grinding and thrashing noises are reliable indicators to predict the HDD failure, but what if you are handling the drive remotely noises cannot analysis the drive concretely or the drive does not show any signs of failure at all.
Here are some possible issue that you might encounter due to a bad disk drive:
- Computer is showing errors while reading, coping, moving, or deleting data.
- Computer shows random errors or reboot automatically.
- Slow system.
- Operating system is not able to boot.
Although, there are software programs available that are specially designed to check your hard drive errors but using these technologies often misleads user from exact issues of the hard drive and provides the wrong estimates of the time for failure. There for most of the users follows a more sophisticated method in order to predict HDD failure, name as SMART that detects and reports all the indicators of drive reliability and show the possibilities of hardware failure.
Its metrics tracks the hard drive and provides complete performance information including number of hours the drive has been switched on, slow spin time to reach operational speed and the count of reallocate sectors, high temperature, and excessive bad sector etc. to the operating system. You can view and analysis this data through software to check the health of the connected storage equipment. Windows user can get the SMART reading through command prompt as well.
Whenever the S.M.A.R.T. data anticipates a possibility of hard drive failure, the software running on the host system may notify the user, so that the users can copy their important data to prevent data loss, and replace the failing drive. If the hard drive is generating S.M.A.R.T errors, then it is always suggested to replace it.