Turning On SMART Monitoring for Hard Drives

My system BIOS does NOT have an option to turn on SMART monitoring for hard
drives. Is there a third party utility I can buy for Windows XP that would
enable SMART Monitoring? I have found many applications to monitor SMART
drives, but those applications all seem to assume that you ENABLED SMART. I
don't have a way to ENABLE it.

--
W

W wrote:
My system BIOS does NOT have an option to turn on SMART monitoring for hard
drives. Is there a third party utility I can buy for Windows XP that would
enable SMART Monitoring? I have found many applications to monitor SMART
drives, but those applications all seem to assume that you ENABLED SMART. I
don't have a way to ENABLE it.


I'm not sure anyone really knows for sure.

http://forums.storagereview.com/inde...tting-in-bios/

I interpreted it to mean the BIOS does a check at
startup, if you have it enabled.

If I read this document, I don't see anything suggesting
SMART is a "trap door" interface, and that there is only
one opportunity to set it (i.e. BIOS gets there first,
BIOS is in control). Some other things on hard drives,
there is only one opportunity to set them, which is
how things like SET-MAX-ADDRESS or the SECURE ERASE
features might be set up. Some things on a drive
are dangerous enough from a malware perspective,
to be blocked at the BIOS level.

D1699r4c-ATA8-ACS.pdf

http://www.t13.org/Documents/Uploade...c-ATA8-ACS.pdf

So I can't really say how it works. But the evidence in
there, is the feature set works like a light switch,
and can be turned on and off as desired.

Linux is good at turning things on that it should
not, so if you can get it working (SMARTmontools)
in Linux, that means it isn't really "blocked" as such.
For example, if I turn off all the SATA ports in the BIOS
and boot from an IDE DVD drive, I will find all the
SATA ports enabled again, all hard drives detected,
when Linux finishes booting. So if a BIOS control is
not absolute in terms of design (not trap door protected),
Linux will override it.

One of my older motherboards has a "Halt On" [Keyboard/Disk]
error setting in the BIOS, which will result in the BIOS
prompting to "Press F1 to continue" after you've read the
BIOS error message or "Press DEL to enter BIOS". But again,
it doesn't say in so many words, whether the error condition
with the disk, is a failure to find something to boot from,
or a finding of a SMART problem.

Motherboard manuals just don't go into that sort of detail.

Paul

"W" schreef in bericht
...
My system BIOS does NOT have an option to turn on SMART monitoring for
hard
drives. Is there a third party utility I can buy for Windows XP that
would
enable SMART Monitoring? I have found many applications to monitor SMART
drives, but those applications all seem to assume that you ENABLED SMART.
I
don't have a way to ENABLE it.

--


How about a BIOS update?



--


|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

"Paul" schreef in bericht
...
W wrote:
My system BIOS does NOT have an option to turn on SMART monitoring for
hard
drives. Is there a third party utility I can buy for Windows XP that
would
enable SMART Monitoring? I have found many applications to monitor
SMART
drives, but those applications all seem to assume that you ENABLED SMART.
I
don't have a way to ENABLE it.


I'm not sure anyone really knows for sure.

http://forums.storagereview.com/inde...tting-in-bios/

I interpreted it to mean the BIOS does a check at
startup, if you have it enabled.

If I read this document, I don't see anything suggesting
SMART is a "trap door" interface, and that there is only
one opportunity to set it (i.e. BIOS gets there first,
BIOS is in control). Some other things on hard drives,
there is only one opportunity to set them, which is
how things like SET-MAX-ADDRESS or the SECURE ERASE
features might be set up. Some things on a drive
are dangerous enough from a malware perspective,
to be blocked at the BIOS level.

D1699r4c-ATA8-ACS.pdf

http://www.t13.org/Documents/Uploade...c-ATA8-ACS.pdf

So I can't really say how it works. But the evidence in
there, is the feature set works like a light switch,
and can be turned on and off as desired.

Linux is good at turning things on that it should
not, so if you can get it working (SMARTmontools)
in Linux, that means it isn't really "blocked" as such.
For example, if I turn off all the SATA ports in the BIOS
and boot from an IDE DVD drive, I will find all the
SATA ports enabled again, all hard drives detected,
when Linux finishes booting. So if a BIOS control is
not absolute in terms of design (not trap door protected),
Linux will override it.

One of my older motherboards has a "Halt On" [Keyboard/Disk]
error setting in the BIOS, which will result in the BIOS
prompting to "Press F1 to continue" after you've read the
BIOS error message or "Press DEL to enter BIOS". But again,
it doesn't say in so many words, whether the error condition
with the disk, is a failure to find something to boot from,
or a finding of a SMART problem.

Motherboard manuals just don't go into that sort of detail.



I suppose you need a vacuum cleaner manual for that.



--


|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os