what is S.M.A.R.T and do I need it when I'm using freebsd (5.x...)

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Jan 02), Angelin Lalev said:
> It seems that the bios setup utility on my desktop machine (MB.
> GA-8IPE1000-G Pro) does not support turning on S.M.A.R.T.
> 
> I remember that long ago I've read somewhere in the net that
> S.M.A.R.T has to do something with remapping the bad sectors on the
> IDE drive similar to the way SCSI controller should do it, but
> probably I've got it wrong...

SMART is a system where you can poll the disk for status info like
temperature, number of corrected reads, self-test results, etc.  Bad
block remapping will get done by the drive whether you use SMART to
monitor it or not.

> So, what is S.M.A.R.T, does FreeBSD use it, and should it be turned
> on trough the bios setup utility?

It's not really a BIOS thing.  It depends on the hard drives you have.
You can install the smartmontools port to monitor SMART data for both
SCSI and ATA disks.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com