Using and understanding SMART hard-drive tools

Using and understanding SMART hard-drive tools
Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) can help save your data from an impending hard-drive failure.

But you need the right software to see and interpret the SMART warnings most hard drives provide. Fortunately, there's free software to help.

SMART warnings, then total drive failure
Barrie Fairley suffered a fate no PC user wants to share.

• "I recently experienced a hard-drive (Maxtor SATA, 500GB) failure, revealed in a BIOS POST message as:"4th Slave. Hard Disk: SMART Status BAD. Backup and Replace. Press F1 to resume.
  
  
  
  "Because the disk was not always recognized, I thought it might be a cable-connection problem in my homebrew desktop. So I tried the following:
  
  
  
  "1. I replaced the cable, cleaned the connection on the drive with alcohol and a swab, and changed the motherboard connection to SATA 5. That didn't solve the problem.
  
  
  
  "2. I ran CHKDSK, but it hung. On one occasion when the system recognized the drive, I backed up all the data and tried a quick format. But that step also hung in the middle of the process.
  
  
  
  "3. System boot then displayed the message:
  
  
  
  "Pri Master Hard Disk SMART Status BAD. Backup and Replace. Press F1 to resume.
  
  
  
  "4. I tried another quick format, but that hung, too.
  
  
  
  "5. I tried disabling SMART and then downloaded and ran the Seagate/Maxtor testing software. That failed, and the drive is now officially dead.
  
  
  
  "I can't find anything about SMART in Windows Secrets nor what to do about the error messages. These days, most disks include SMART, and it would be nice to know how to interact with it."
  
  

Some hard-drive failures are unpredictable — such as electrical surges from lightning strikes, dropping the drive onto a hard surface, and similar random events that can kill a drive on the spot.

Other drive failures can be — to one degree or another — predicted. They're age- and wear-related problems that are not random; they develop slowly but inevitably over time.

For example, a drive's head-positioning mechanism will get worn just from normal use, so it can't position the read/write heads as precisely as it could when new. Also, parts of a drive's magnetic coating can wear thin, becoming less reliable at retaining data. Drives can wear out in other ways.

At first, a drive's built-in, error-correcting circuitry should detect and compensate for these wear-related errors — and the drive appears to operate normally. In fact, modern drives have such good error-correcting routines that you might be totally unaware that trouble is brewing.

That's where SMART drive monitoring can help. SMART is built into most drives currently in use. It keeps track of the number, frequency, and types of errors a drive experiences. When the SMART system sees errors approaching a level where error correction can no longer cope (or some other threshold set by the manufacturer), it sends an alarm to any software that's listening.

In Barrie's case, the PC's BIOS was alerted. It noticed that the hard drive's SMART system was predicting imminent drive death and relayed the message to the startup screen.

SMART warnings should be taken seriously — the system rarely produces false alarms. That's because SMART tracks the cumulative number of errors over time.

When a SMART system yells for help, there's real, persistent, and uncorrectabletrouble afoot. The afflicted hard drive is almost surely facing near-term failure. Error-correction routines might keep the drive working for a little while longer, but there's no fixing it.

So when you see a warning along the lines of SMART Status BAD. Backup and Replace, you're on borrowed time. You should immediately stop whatever you're doing and make a full backup of everything on the drive. Replace the drive with a new one, and restore your backups. Don't try to salvage the bad drive — it's junk.

Although virtually all newer drives have SMART baked in, not all PCs automatically relay SMART messages to you. In all too many cases, a drive's SMART system may be sounding the alarm, but no software is listening.

If — unlike Barrie — your PC lacks built-in SMART monitoring (check your OEM specs), or if you'd rather not trust a hidden, built-in subsystem, you can use add-on software that lets you monitor your drive's SMART system — either on demand or all the time. Most of these tools also let you run various diagnostic routines to verify that a hard drive is healthy.

A few minutes with your favorite search engine will turn up dozens of drive-monitoring tools, both free and paid. To get you started, here are a few free examples (see Figures 1–3):

• HD Tune (free and U.S. $35 Pro; site) is one of the easiest-to-use drive-monitoring tools. Just install it and read the results.
  
  Figure 1. HD Tune's drive-health status window
  
  
  
• PassMark DiskCheckup (free for personal use; $15 per corporate license; site) takes a little configuring but offers exceptionally easy access to your drive's self-test routines.
  
  Figure 2. PassMark DiskCheckup's hard-drive self-test window
  
  
  
• The free, open-source smartmontools (site) is command-line driven. It will tell you everything a drive's SMART system knows, but in a somewhat cluttered, text-only format.
  
  Figure 3. SmartMonTools runs in a command window
  
  
  

Hope that helps, Barrie.

The 'Microsoft Signature' hardware option
John Smith's question alerted me to a hardware side of Microsoft that I (surprisingly) knew nothing about.

• "Hi, Fred. I'd really appreciate your thoughts on buying a laptop with Microsoft Signature at the MS store.
  
  "Is it worthwhile, or is it just the same as what PC Decrapifier [site] does?"

I'm a little chagrined to admit I've never considered buying a new notebook through Microsoft. MS simply wasn't on my radar as a source for hardware.

But it turns out that Microsoft does sell name-brand systems, set up for what they call the Microsoft Signature Experience.

The Microsoft Store gives specifics, but the gist is this: Basically, MS gets systems from the original manufacturers, strips out the crapware, adds Microsoft Security Essentials, and tunes the system for better performance (though exactly what that "tuning" means, beyond crapware-removal, isn't described in any detail).

That sounds like it could be a time-saver — but at what price?

On the day I visited the site, Microsoft's highlighted offering was a Samsung Series 9 900X4B notebook for $1,099. I then searched other sites to see what they wanted for that model with the same specs. Amazon's price was $1,236 — $137 more; Buy.com and TigerDirect.com had a price tag of $1,313 — $214 more.

I admit I was surprised. The Microsoft store actually had the lowest price. What's more, MS was offering a back-to-school special: a free Xbox included with the purchase of selected systems.

I didn't make a purchase (I'd already bought a new notebook from another source), so I can't comment on Microsoft's sale or delivery process, after-sale service, and so on. And prices do fluctuate, so MS might not always have the best price on the Samsung or other systems.

But on the basis of what I saw, I'll definitely check out the Microsoft Store for future PC purchases. Getting a pre-cleaned, crapware-free system, and quite possibly saving several hundred dollars in the process, certainly makes it worth a look.

Thanks, John!

Reader offers more help for slow XP shutdowns
John Matenkosky had something to add after reading "Reducing shutdown delays in XP" in the Aug. 9 LangaList Plus.

• "Fred Langa has again posted methods to speed up logging out of XP, but I don't remember him ever discussing this one: the Microsoft User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean).
  
  "The Microsoft story on UPHClean can be found in MS Support article 837115.
  
  "I installed UPHClean long, long ago, and it permanently cured my XP Pro system of slow shutdowns."

Thanks, John. The Microsoft User Profile Hive Cleanup Service is basically a special-purpose Registry cleaner for XP that can help correct certain kinds of sign-off/shut-down errors.

Microsoft has offered several different Registry-cleaning tools over the years. For example, there was Regclean.exe, a standalone Registry cleaner for Win9x and 2000. That tool was discontinued a decade ago.

But UPHClean lives on — a free download for XP and automated and built into Vista and Win7 (both of which don't need and can't use the standalone version of UPHClean).

Note that UPHClean is not a general-purpose Registry cleaner. Tools like CCleaner (free; site) and jv16PowerTools Lite (free; site) now fill that gap. But for XP users experiencing sign-off errors at shutdown, the free UPHClean might help.