Home Server SMART is a new Windows Home Server add-in by Dojo North Software to help you monitor your hard drive health. As its name implies, the add-in makes extensive use of the Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology or S.M.A.R.T for short. Relying on this standardized monitoring system, Home Server SMART is able to gather various indicators of reliability and possible failures from any IDE(PATA)/SATA/eSATA and SMART supporting disk drives. 

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Disks that are connected via IDE (PATA) and SATA (including eSATA), support Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) and report that S.M.A.R.T. data via the standard Microsoft storage driver (most modern PATA/SATA drives do), are fully supported. Unfortunately, since neither USB nor IEEE 1394 (FireWire) attached disks report S.M.A.R.T. data in a standardized manner, Home Server SMART cannot read S.M.A.R.T. data from them. However, it can read the standard Microsoft storage driver "failure predicted" flag, and USB/IEEE 1394 expose this, so if the storage driver detects a potential problem, Home Server SMART will alert you to it. Simply log into the WHS Console, select the Home Server SMART add-in and immediately see all installed/connected disks. Click on a disk to see more details about the disk.

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S.M.A.R.T. Details

 For any given S.M.A.R.T. attribute, the fields that contain the most important data are:

• Threshold (integer, 0-253)
• Value (integer, 0-253)
• Raw Data (hex)
• Critical (true/false)
• Status

Threshold
If an attribute’s S.M.A.R.T. threshold value is nonzero (1-253), the attribute is a health monitor.  If the value of the Value field ever falls below (or equal to) the threshold value, the attribute is said to have failed, and the disk health becomes critical.  Per the S.M.A.R.T. specification, failure is said to be imminent (within 24 hours).

If an attribute’s S.M.A.R.T. threshold value is zero, the attribute is an age monitor.  The Value can never fail; if the Value falls to zero, the disk is considered to be Geriatric (old age).

Value
The Value field is a normalized value that the disk manufacturer calculates based on the raw data.  Different manufacturer’s use different numbers, so you should not concern yourself with why on one disk an attribute’s value is 200 but on another it’s 100.  You should only be concerned with it falling closer and closer to its threshold.  If you see a disk, over time, slowly falling towards its threshold, it should be taken as an indicator that the disk may be getting ready to fail.

Raw Data
The raw data is typically used as a storage area for the S.M.A.R.T. attribute data.  Many attributes, such as bad sectors, pending bad sectors, end-to-end errors, etc. are “counters” of events, so if a disk has encountered 23 bad sectors and 8 end-to-end errors, you will see the values stored as 17 and 08, respectively.  Raw data is always shown in hexadecimal.

Critical
If an attribute is showing Yes for its Critical value, that does not mean that the drive is ready to fail.  A Critical attribute is one that can be seen as “more critical” than others.  Attributes are either critical or non-critical.  A warning or failure status on a Critical attribute is generally much more serious than a warning or failure status on a non-critical attribute.  While a failure of a non-critical attribute can certainly indicate a drive is ready to fail, a failure on a critical attribute is much more significant and much more likely to result in imminent data loss.

Status
Status is a value determined by Home Server SMART, which is calculated based on the values of the Threshold, Value and Raw Data fields.  Home Server SMART will report one of the following possible statuses for each attribute:

• Healthy - No abnormalities detected for this attribute.
• Fail - The attribute value has fallen less than or equal to the Threshold value.  Per the S.M.A.R.T. specification, failure is imminent (within 24 hours).  This hour figure is not exact or a guarantee, but it should not be taken lightly.  You should replace the disk as soon as possible.
• Degraded - For some Critical attributes, there is a nonzero value in the Raw Data.  This indicates that there have been some problems on the disk that could soon become serious problems.  You should keep a close eye on the disk and replace it if the problems become more numerous or serious.
• Geriatric - The attribute value has fallen to zero, and the Threshold value is also zero.  This is not a failure or even a problem.  It simply means the drive is aging.  Manufacturers often regard this as an indication the disk has reached the end of its useful life per its design specifications.

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