New
#170
I'm starting to wonder/speculate on something. Any feedback & corrections appreciated.
The self-monitoring feature built into modern HDDs seems to work like this:
- It triggers a S.M.A.R.T. error when it detects a problem.
- It "flags" the drive as BAD.
- Disc diagnostic tools see the error condition, and immediately report "Ooh, we found an error...BAD DRIVE!" Even though they don't actually identify any specific problems.
- When Windows boots, it, too sees the flag & immediately says there's a serious drive problem, better back-up data ASAP, etc., etc. But it's only reading that flag...it doesn't independently validate the diagnosis.
- Once this "bad" drive is flagged in Windows, maybe certain applications (like back-up programs?) will in turn presume they're operating on a bad drive and trigger conditional behavior based on Windows' report.
Everything "downstream" trusts the S.M.A.R.T. report....but what if S.M.A.R.T. itself has malfunctioned? If NO other disc utility actually finds any errors other than the flag in the drive's self-report, and the only programs having conniptions are the back-up programs.....are we sure that drive is really bad?
If I disable S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, might the error flag be removed and the responses it triggers in Windows be avoided? Is it worth trying? Or do I have have my head totally lodged up a dark place here....?