SMART HDD & Utility
For many years, computer hard disc drives have had a much forgotten feature which could save you from data lost. SMART is a technology which will find on all hard drives since the 1990s. It monitors various variables on the hard drive and works out when the hard drive is likely to fail, thus saving you from data lost.
Although many hard drives use SMART, this technology is no use to the majority of computer users. In order for the hard drive to tell the user that the hard drive may fail is with the use of a utility program on the computer. Windows does not currently have a utility which will tell the user SMART information. Both Mac OS X and Linux have utilities to let the user know if the hard drive will fail.
Mac OS X has a tool called Disk Utility which will allow you to manage all your drives on your Mac, as well as view the SMART information on each drive.
Since Ubuntu 9.10, there has been a similar tool pre-installed. Palimpsest Disk Utility does a similar job, allowing you to view information about each drive, format/partition it, perform benchmarks on it and view the SMART data. It will even run in the background, and give you a notification as soon as an error has been found on a drive.
Disk Utility in Ubuntu 10.04 (click to enlarge)
Me!
Ed Hewitt, 19, Studying @ Derby Uni, Blogger, Ubuntu user, Columnist & Podcaster for FCM, Gamer, Admin on Gfire.- Ubuntu was feeling slow. Problem. Spotify again. 20-30% sitting idle! Please fix this!
- Pressure, missed the deadline for FCM #41, having to quickly write up my review of Gish!
- Yet again, no need for drivers on Ubuntu, but you do on Windows :D
