Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) is a major step to the truly fault tolerant computing environment. As all of us know that the Hard Disk Drive's, (HDD) in our servers, workstations or even home computers hold vast amounts of critical data. The HDD also has the greatest potential for failure of any component in a system. To date we could check a system for ôsoft errorsö like cross linked files or lost clusters, we could scan for viruses and check the surface of the drives platters for defects, but there was really no reliable way to detect hardware failure.

Of course after the fact there are some diagnostics to check the drive out, but alas, our precious data is gone. S.M.A.R.T. on the other hand, monitors the drive's hardware performance with drive specific tests on the controller. When a fault is detected, a notification is given that the hardware may fail and all data should be backed up immediately and the drive sent for repair or replacement.

S.M.A.R.T. compliant drives are the norm, and have been shipping for several years now, and almost all drives available today are S.M.A.R.T. compliant. S.M.A.R.T. is defined and endorsed by the Small Form Factor (SFF) Committee, which includes Compaq Computer Corporation, Hitachi, Ltd., IBM Storage Products Company, Maxtor Corporation, Quantum Corporation, Seagate Technology, Toshiba Corporation and Western Digital Corporation among others. In fact, IBM has shipped nearly 3 million S.M.A.R.T. compliant drives, which have logged over 20 billion hours. S.M.A.R.T. is an industry standard reliability prediction indicator for both IDE/ATA and SCSI HDD.