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SMART – What does it mean?
Your hard drive is trying to communicate with you—you just have to understand what it is saying. It may seem hard to believe, but this is really an apt description of what is possible. SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) is—just as the name implies—a system for monitoring and analyzing hard drives and creating status messages. Since 1996, this technology has been integrated into practically all hard drives. Indeed, it provides interesting data about your hard drive. SMART is by no means limited to monitoring a hard drive’s temperature—it also provides information on the total running time, errors that have occurred, performance information and lots more. Importantly, by monitoring the key parameters continuously, you can detect potential problems at an early stage.
Where can I get the SMART values?
The entire SMART area can be found on the “Monitoring” tab. You can display the S.M.A.R.T data there (see image below), re-scan hard drives from the hard drives (including devices that have recently been connected) or refresh the S.M.A.R.T data from the hard drives currently found (usually faster than re-scan). The Write report function can be particularly helpful. This feature creates a text file containing all of the relevant data on the selected hard drive. This feature creates a text files with all relevant data of the particular hard drive. Among other things it contains the exact type designation, serial number, firmware version and lots of other valuable data. If, for example, there are errors on your hard drive (or you suspect that there are), you can send this text file to your hard drive manufacturer, who can then already begin with a substantiated diagnosis.
And are those values supposed to mean?
Ashampoo HDD Control 2 is interpreting the values for you! Once you’ve selected S.M.A.R.T Data a list opens containing up to 20 S.M.A.R.T values (the number of values depends on the model) of your hard drive. Click on any value and Ashampoo HDD Control 2 will explain and evaluate it.
Example: Click on a value (see image below) and an explanation will appear below the list.
This explanation (see image below) contains the essential information about this S.M.A.R.T value, its meaning, the consequences and some technical explanation.
There is no information for an attribute
SMART is a standard that many hard drive manufacturers have agreed to comply with, but it is not absolutely binding. Therefore, certain values may be unique to your drive, but not ‘understood’ by Ashampoo HDD Control 2. In this case, you can create a report (see above) and inquire with your hard drive manufacturer for more details.
Info
The monitoring function is not supported by all USB and Firewire devices. The necessary S.M.A.R.T. functions are not supported by hard drives accessed via the AHCI interface or by drives configured in RAID arrays. Usually hard drives in so called software RAIDs and those, which are configured as single hard drives in connection with RAID controllers, are an exception to this.
Maximum security
Ashampoo HDD Control 2 minimizes the risk of a sudden hard drive crash. Studies have shown that, for the majority of hard drive failures, there are clear signs in advance that could have been discerned in the SMART data. The SMART values provide valuable information on whether a hard drive is reaching the end of its life cycle. But even the hard drive manufacturers themselves are not able to provide exact information on when a hard drive will crash. Most crashes can be detected in advance through a decrease in performance, slower reaction times or increasing error values. Still, it is impossible to guarantee that even a hard drive with good values will never crash. Ambient temperature increases, vibrations or voltage peaks are a few good examples of sudden changes to external conditions that can cause a hard drive to fail. “As safe as possible,” is probably the best recipe. Important: Please backup your files, if the health of your systems gets worse!
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