[mdlug] So... SMART tools. Do they work, and if so how?

[Ingles, Raymond]

A couple weeks ago, I rearranged my Linux partitions considerably, freed up space and so forth. While I was doing that using a Linux live DVD, I did a SMART check on the discs. Nothing stood out as a problem on any of the five drives I have in the system.

All was well last night when I shut down my desktop PC. This morning, as I booted it up, I got that "click click click" sound we all know and loathe, and after a delay the BIOS came up and let me boot. One of my drives was not present, of course, once I logged in.

Thankfully (a) it was sort of a 'miscellaneous stuff' drive, nothing system-critical and (b) I have an external backup of the stuff I really care about. But when I get home tonight, if past experience with dead drives is any guide, I have little realistic hope of getting anything off it. I was planning on waiting another year before getting a new drive; supposedly new forms of flash memory are coming. But I guess I'll have to look over things now.

So I have two separate though not entirely unrelated questions:


1.       Do SMART tools actually work in practice? Is there anything I could have done differently to get even a hint of warning about this?

2.       Anyone know good deals on a 500GB+ SSD SATA drive?