What is S.M.A.R.T. COMMAND FAILED?

My hard drive may be bad.
When I boot now I get an error message
primary master hard disk: S.M.A.R.T. COMMAND FAILED PRESS F1 TO
RESUME

It will boot but it is slowww
Is it dead?

Thanks

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 09:38:51 GMT, geezer <wee@willy.com> wrote:

>My hard drive may be bad.
>When I boot now I get an error message
>primary master hard disk: S.M.A.R.T. COMMAND FAILED PRESS F1 TO
>RESUME
>
>It will boot but it is slowww
>Is it dead?
>
>Thanks

Supposedly SMART has some parameters that monitor disk health.
Frankly I have no real grasp of what it all means.

The best thing to do if it boots up slowly is first backup any
important data right away which you should have been doing regularly
anway but like everyone else never do - me included.

And you should then get the manufacturers diag software free from
their site they all have one , and run that. If it fails contact the
maker if its still under warranty. And if its still running wipe it
clean with a data wiper. Actually you are lucky as you might have time
to do all that if it comes out as bad ,thereby preventing the
agonizing choice -

Should I send it back like it is dead with "Hot Babes and Big Boobs II
" and "Top Buns" starring Tom Cruiser on it ????

Or should I eat the cost of the HD and buy a new one?

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 09:56:34 GMT, "John@Smith.com"
<xxxxspud@newscene.com> wrote:


>Supposedly SMART has some parameters that monitor disk health.
>Frankly I have no real grasp of what it all means.

The bios mechansim is merely to query the drive for the
Smart flag (or not if the bios setting is disbled). The
drive manufacturer handles determination of what generates a
smart-bad error so it "could" vary per each drive, but
generally speaking they do not want unnecessary RMA and thus
would try not to have any unwarranted Smart warnings. The
drive logic has determined that some parameter is wrong,
when none should be, so it sets the smart flag.