> My scepticism regarding SMART data continues ... the flaky drive
>showed no errors, and a full test and full zero-write using the WD
>diagnostics revealed no errors either. If the drive is bad, there's
>no evidence that would cause WD to issue an RMA.
I've been having a rash of drive failures recently and I have come to trust
SMART.
One thing's for sure - SMART is not implemented the same on all drives or
controllers. Recently one older Seagate drive showed no SMART capability in
linux using the gnome-disk-utility, but I could read the SMART data from the
drive in Windows with HD Tune.
It isn't infallible, but SMART is certainly one tool you can use in the
diagnosis. I wouldn't ignore Reallocated Sector counts or Current Pending
Sector counts, for instance.
Working for a customer this weekend, I replaced an older 60G WD drive that I
knew for months to have bad sectors, but the Reallocated Sector Count was
still 0. After a scan for errors with HD Tune, the Current Pending sector
count showed 13, but the Reallocated Sector Count never grew.
There is still a lot for me to learn - like the relationship between SMART
within the drive and the controller's support of SMART. You would think they
are independent of each other, but I wonder...
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