[9fans] SMART: Silly Marketing Acronym, Rebuts Truth

[Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>]

> The interesting thing (for me) was that
> the SMART data from the drive gave it an all clear right to the end. But
> unlike the SSDs, there was plenty of behavioural warning to remind me to
> have the backups up to date and a spare at the ready...

FWIW, of the three-four dozen or so drives I have actively SMART monitored
over the years, of the ones that failed, *not* *one* gave a SMART warning
before dying.

That includes a spinny disk in one of my Mac Minis.  Of anyone, I would
expect Apple to be in bed with their HD suppliers enough to have HD
firmware that reliably reports SMART errors (since the disk utilities do
pay attemtion to it).  I spent a month listening to that drive's heads
slam back to the home position as it tried to recalibrate itself, before
eventually dying. To the bitter end, SMART reported "a-ok boss!"

--lyndon