Tracking a drive's SMART table status before and after imaging
SMART table is a valuable source of information about a hard drive’s health. SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) provides stats of a drive’s operation, thus helping predict its future failure.
Making a definitive conclusion based on the indices in SMART table is not easy: not all parameters are critical, it is usually a combination of bad values of a few parameters that point to a trouble, time factor plays a role too (how fast has the state of the drive been deteriorating).
View SMART table
SMART table is included in the Diagnostics report. If you want to have a look at the current indices:
- Go to Other > View SMART.
- Select the drive.
- Click Start.
SMART table report.
SMART table attributes may differ depending on the drive manufacturer. The most critical attributes are:
- Reallocated sectors count.
- Current pending sector count.
- Uncorrectable sector count.
When RAW value of any of these attributes is greater than zero, TaskForce highlights it in yellow.
The worse the values, especially in these critical attributes, the more carefully the drive needs to be treated.
Track changes of the SMART table attributes
To keep track of the changes occurring to the attributes of the SMART table, the imaging settings can be easily adjusted to records SMART table indices prior and after each imaging session.
Adjust the imaging settings to keep the record of SMART prior and after the imaging session.
By comparing the two tables, user can evaluate whether the health of a drive has been deteriorating throughout the imaging session and thus assess how quickly its health has been getting worse. Any discrepancies between the two SMART tables will be highlighted in yellow.
How SMART table state changed after image acquisition
Whenever you need to evaluate how the state of the drive has been changing long-term, go to previous imaging sessions and look up SMART table. TaskForce stores this information in its case management system.
