S.M.A.R.T monitoring failure/Maxtor Hard Drive

[geeky]

Hi all, my second PC's Maxtor hard drive is failing the S.M.A.R.T monitoring upon boot-up and I have to press F1 each time to load windows. I have run Maxtor PowerMax 4.23 utility and it has reported no problems otherthan when I run the quick test it advises to run the advanced test (which it subsequently passed). I've also been using the PC everyday for around 3 weeks with no ill effects and have heard some reports of drives surviving for quite awhile despite the S.M.A.R.T warnings.

I'm not overly concerned about loss of data but is there a way of getting rid of the warning? I have tried disabling the function in BIOS but the error remains.

Anything I can do? I'm not sure where the program resides so I am unsure whether a drive wipe would help at all.

Thanks.

 

[darkguset]

Best thing to do is get a SMART monitoring program (i assume you run windows) and see exactly what the problem is and where. If it seems fatal, you better backup your data and stop using the drive for saving data.

Better be safe than sorry!

 

[dt]

i would backup everything right now just in case its telling the truth.

 

[virtualban]

I would use that hard-drive to boot up systems that are connected to a perfectly safe file server which holds up ghost images for the case of failure. Other than that, if you really did everything in bios settings, probably a fresh format won't solve anything.