Another SMART error message :(

[c6ke]

Hi there.. I came here through Google and found the S.M.A.R.T. failure thread... I have the following during POST(boot):

S.M.A.R.T. failure predicted on Primary Master: <Model>
Warning: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive.
A failure may be imminent.

Possibilities to get on are: F1 to continue and del to enter BIOS..

It's an ASUS A7V Motherboard with Award Bios...

What can I do?

The drive still seems to be working properly and chkdsk (WinXP Prof) doesn't tell me there's anything wrong though when I launch Partition Magic Pro 8.0 (from PowerQuest) and try their internal search utility it tells me something like "993:" there is open data on the drive please launch the OS- error search program (I translated it here from german into english)

I then decided to change something in order to check if there is a problem: I converted the first partition of the disk to NTFS (before it was FAT32) but still the message pumps up....

So does anybody know why I get this errormessage and how I could do anything against it?

By the way: Smart monitoring is disabled in my bios settings so I don't understand this (!)

I already thought about a low-level format but I first wanted to ask whether you have a better idea... I repeat: The drive works properly.. There doesn't seem to be a problem yet...

Please help me - thanks..

[MDS]

what brand of drive do you have? You could alway goto the companies site and dl their hard drive test as most drive maker have them.

[watzmann]

why don't you test it on it's own software,
for example if you have a western digitall Hard Disk then download it's disk manager from WD site and run it on your machine to test this drive,
almost it will repair the problem or at least it will explain what's happening

[c6ke]

Ok.. I'll check that.. didn't know that western digital has it (it is a western digital HDD)

Hope it works...

[watzmann]

i think it will work,
select the diagonestic menu and start the diefferant tests on your HDD,
just tell me when it succeed

[Nighthawk]

I'd be very suspicious of the drive even if the diagnostic tools say it's OK..

Most manufacturers will give you a replacement when you tell them that the SMART system predicted a failure. Try to get an advance RMA so you can copy all of your stuff off the old and possibly dying drive to the new replacment one.

[watzmann]

why to be suspicious from the tool?, it may be a small problem and it can be solved by the software .... so why not to try it firstly
and of course you'll try to install SMART again and then decide to replace the drive if the message is continuied

really i think you can rela on WD Diagnostic Software. just try it

[nukes]

Try the software. If the message still comes up, try reseating the IDE cables. I'd strongly advise that you grab all your data from the drive. I've seen drives die without giving this warning, but I've never, ever seen or heard of this warning appearing without the drive crunching a few days later. Take it seriously.
You might try a LLF once you get all your data off it, don't know how much help it would be though.

[c6ke]

all right...

first of all: I saved all the necessary data already (just when the message appeared the first time)

I tested it with powermax from Maxtor and it told me (installation confirmation tests):

smart attribute check: failure

all the other tests passed correctly...

Dunno what to do now... The Maxtor web site(knowledge base or something like that) doesn't have this error code/message and they therefore don't tell anything about this one...

[dunbar]

I'm not trying to sound sarcastic, but I'd strongly suggest that the drives S.M.A.R.T. function is advising you totally correctly, back up your data and if the drive is in warranty, send it in for repair. I just had a S.M.A.R.T. error number 1720 on a Maxtor 20 Gig, the drive was still within Maxtors 3 year warranty. Maxtors' Maxblast software said the same thing for me as you saw - failed SMART test. The PC manufacturer also wanted me to test the drive with their own software, the drive failed there as well. When I sent the drive in, I got a new drive in exchange, the PC manufacturer gave me a Western Digital 20 Gig. Maybe there was a reason why the Maxtor drive I sent in did not get me a Maxtor drive in return, eh?