[SOLVED] S.M.A.R.T status 'failing' for 3 years, disk is still working

[shadowbear]

I've had this drive for over 3 years. After a few months of having installed it I happened to go into disk utility to check on another drive and noticed this drive was now in red and SMART status said it was failing. I never got any notification that the drive was failing, I just happened to stumble upon the info, it could have been 'failing' for months. Anyways, I freaked out and hurriedly backed everything up and installed another drive to replace it.

However I left the failing drive installed and left some of the data on it just to see what would happen. Everything is still fine, all the data is still there and it seems to be working as usual - 3 years later! So is this failing status for real?

The 'failing' drive only has data on it, no applications of any kind - would that make a difference? Disk utility doesn't give me the option to repair/erase/reformat the drive at all, is there another way to get into it and see what's up with it?

I'm using OSX 10.5.8

 

[bombastinator]

yes and no.

You've probably got a bunch of bad blocks on it that are locked out. If you're not using the drive regularly though, there's almost no wear, so it will probably keep going for a long time. just because you got a bad block does not mean the spindle or head are actually bad. it might just be a crappy plate. If that's the case you just have a drive that is smaller than advertised. Standard working life for a hard drive though is usually about 5 years, so it may go anyway just from old age. Ive got a 1.5 gig full height drive that's still going umteen years later though so it;s not a hard and fast thing.