HELP: S.M.A.R.T detected a failure

[konfusion666]

SMART is notorious for giving false alarms. One of my drives (a Maxtor!) has been giving SMART errors for the past year. Still chugging along, business as usual. I'm not a casual user, I do lots of video encoding and any bit errors will show up in divx/xvid/MPEG2 as blotches, macroblock errors, sound bugs, etc. -- never get anything.

[gimmegimme]

I had the same problem... my maxtor 160GB started giving me a SMART error about a year ago. I ran the basic test, the advanced test and the drive passed both. I've since upgraded my motherboard and the IDE cable and still get the errors. I even have SMART disabled in the BIOS! The drive still seems to work fine though.. and as someone said earlier, without an error code, it'll be hard to RMA.

[flipside]

just tell them the drive is not recognized by the bios. I would suggest do the advanced replacement. They are sticky on how the drive is packaged. I used the same packaging the replacement drive came in to return the broken drive. Saved me the hassle of looking for packaging .

[Shiifty]

WOA! this is the first time, that I have heard of this SMART technology working. Usually the hard drive dies before the SMART kicks in.

I had the same thing happen, I ignored the SMART warnings for about a month. Then one day it refused to boot, it was having trouble reading from areas on the drive and was buggered. I had a hell of a time getting my data off the drive. It was just out of warranty too, however it was a replacement for another drive that went tits up. Nice, Maxtor....

Backup your data and RMA the drive. It *may* be a false alarm, but can you risk it?

[akito925]

yeah thats the frist that I'd heard about the s.m.a.r.t thing. lol

if you want to get your drive rma'ed give it a few puntches.. it will give you error codes. lol

[Spike]

You shouldn't just ignore SMART warnings - that's just stupid. You have to find out which SMART value in question is giving the warning. Obviously some of the values like power-on hours count or stop start count are fairly benign but others shouldn't be taken so lightly.

[firehawk12]

^^
I've had one SMART error, though after I reset the computer it disappeared... this was years ago though.

I don't mind Maxtor, not as much as other people here seem to.
Their RMA is very easy though, you can even do it online.

Choose the option where you give them your CC number and they send you a hard drive first, so that you can back up your files and just use their box to send your hard drive back. Easy.

[bender]

My 3yr old maxtor drive has just died after showing the smart failure for a day. All the computers so far can see the stuff there on the HD but I can't access or copy any off it. any ideas??

[x86asm]

My 3yr old maxtor drive has just died after showing the smart failure for a day. All the computers so far can see the stuff there on the HD but I can't access or copy any off it. any ideas??

I suggest you start a new topic.

[sleepyguy]

backup your data and rma your drive (if still under warranty). go get yourself a seagate with a 5yr warranty. if you original drive is out of warranty run a disk-kill low-level format after you backed up your data and destroy it physically then junk it. you can never be too safe.

[Macross_Freek]

To all the people who said it would be tough to RMA with an error code, the last time I did an RMA which was about a year ago I did not require one at all. Is this something new?

To the OP: If you dont' want to go out and get your own packaging do the advance RMA and get them to send the drive first. Just put your old drive in the packaging they sent your new drive in and ship that off.

[robieG]

I had the same thing happen, I ignored the SMART warnings for about a month. Then one day it refused to boot, it was having trouble reading from areas on the drive and was buggered. I had a hell of a time getting my data off the drive. It was just out of warranty too, however it was a replacement for another drive that went tits up. Nice, Maxtor....

Backup your data and RMA the drive. It *may* be a false alarm, but can you risk it?

lol i did the same thing, i figured it was a false alarm since it was working fine... one day 2 weeks later. dead...

[dmdsoftware2]

WHEN WILL PEOPLE LEARN !?!?!

Don't be tempted to buy maxtor. I don't care if they are giving them out free. Don't trust maxtor drives !!!! They are the biggest pieces of crap, and getting warranty work done on them is crazy.