S.M.A.R.T. says my hardrive is going bad

[loopsider]

I fried a Western Digital 30gb hardrive, and had important music files on it (songs I made myself). I was not going to give up on it so my dad opened it up and found out that the circuit board was attaced to the drive with a mere socket, and all that was wrong was a voltage regulator on the board. So he orders the same hardrive and attaches the new circuit board on the old drive, and it works (despite it being a newer revision board). After a couple of months, I now get a smart error reading that tells me I should back up the drive. I turned the smart capability off and things have been going ok for some days now.

I did backup the drive immediately after putting the new drive on a couple DVDs, so if it dies on me it will only be an annoyance. Yet I don't want to use it while thinking its going to die on me any moment.

So my question is, should I worry? And what sort of thing physically could cause the error?

 

[_Chrono_]

i have a Maxtor 30GB that has been giving the SMART error press F1 to ignore for over a year! i tend not to worry anymore but backing up important data would be wise also

 

[sheik124]

honestly, if any hard drive is giving you errors, you should replace it, my Craxtor 60 GB drive suddenly began giving me the click of death without any warning, and I barely managed to back it up. A while back I plugged it back in and I can access all my data and it doesn't click anymore, but I wouldn't push my luck with it

 

[LazerTag]

and HD's really are so cheap anymore to buy. I caught my 250gig (Maxtor 8gig cache 7200rpm) on sale some months back for a mere $100 after rebate. I think they may even be lower now.

why take the risk of possible valuable data loss?

 

[loopsider]

i have a Maxtor 30GB that has been giving the SMART error press F1 to ignore for over a year! i tend not to worry anymore but backing up important data would be wise also

heh, just go to the BIOS and disable the feature.

Thank you for the replies everyone, everything is backed up so if it shuts down on me it won't be a setback. I'll probably rehaul my master drive (my system hardrive is a slow 8 gig drive) to a faster rpm as well. I'm pretty cautious about everything now.

 

[Eagle]

and HD's really are so cheap anymore to buy. I caught my 250gig (Maxtor 8gig cache 7200rpm) on sale some months back for a mere $100 after rebate. I think they may even be lower now.

why take the risk of possible valuable data loss?

I got the WD version of that drive for $120 so I'd say thats about right. As for the original question, SMART isnt too smart... actually its rather a pain in the ass, I've had drives that it detected as being bad because it had more than one partition.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

honestly, if any hard drive is giving you errors, you should replace it, my Craxtor 60 GB drive suddenly began giving me the click of death without any warning, and I barely managed to back it up. A while back I plugged it back in and I can access all my data and it doesn't click anymore, but I wouldn't push my luck with it

I never had a Maxtor HDD give me a click of death. You probably just gotten a faulty HDD. Thus time to RMA it if possible.

 

[loopsider]

I got the WD version of that drive for $120 so I'd say thats about right. As for the original question, SMART isnt too smart... actually its rather a pain in the ass, I've had drives that it detected as being bad because it had more than one partition.

heh, thank you for that. It confirms that turning on smart was a bad idea to begin with.

 

[Hexidecimal]

Im amazed you managed to open and reclose the drive and it worked, those things are made in sterile enviornments for a reason. The smallest flick of dust on a disk will cause the head to skip. You're lucky.

 

[loopsider]

Im amazed you managed to open and reclose the drive and it worked, those things are made in sterile enviornments for a reason. The smallest flick of dust on a disk will cause the head to skip. You're lucky.

I imagine you are referring to my taking off the circuit board.
I am aware of that, as was my father who is a computer tech. He only took off the circuit board, the hard-disk was still in the housing. I know I made it sound like it when I said "opened it up", but getting to the disk is not necessary to remove the circuit board.