SMART may refer to any of the following:

  1. When referring to software, smart or intelligence is an ability of a program to function with little or no human interaction. Some companies may improperly refer to this intelligence as AI (artificial intelligence).

  2. With hardware, smart describes any hardware device with more than basic abilities. For example, a Smart TV describes a TV that connects to the Internet and uses services like Netflix. For hardware to gain these abilities, the devices often have code programmed into the firmware of the device.

  3. Short for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology, S.M.A.R.T., or SMART, is a diagnostic method originally developed by IBM and introduced with the ATA-3 specification. At that time, S.M.A.R.T. was called Predictive Failure Analysis. This technology was initially developed for IBM mainframe drives to give advanced warning of drive failures. Based on this diagnostic, Compaq announced IntelliSafe, which was submitted to the ATA/IDE standards committees, and the resulting standard was named S.M.A.R.T.

S.M.A.R.T. analyzes many mechanical attributes; over time, some failures can be predicted by detecting if the hard drive is moving out of tolerance. While the S.M.A.R.T. technology can detect upcoming issues, not all hard drive failures are predictable. The picture below shows an example of a S.M.A.R.T. error indicating the status of the Primary (master) hard drive is bad. This error indicates that the drive should be replaced.

Most hard drive and SSD manufacturers include the S.M.A.R.T. Technology in their hard drives, including Crucial, IBM, Western Digital, Maxtor, Quantum, Seagate, and Fujitsu.

Where do I download S.M.A.R.T.?

Smart is part of the hard drive’s firmware and is not something you can download. All recent hard drives and SSDs (solid-state drives) should already have S.M.A.R.T. To access the S.M.A.R.T. information or see your drive statistics, see the following section.

  • Where do I download S.M.A.R.T.?
  • How can I view the S.M.A.R.T. information?
  • What type of information can S.M.A.R.T. show?
  • Related information.

How can I view the S.M.A.R.T. information?

The best method of accessing all S.M.A.R.T information is to use a drive management utility from your hard drive manufacture. These utilities can show you all drive information, including the S.M.A.R.T. information. Below is an example of the Storage Executive drive management utility from Crucial.

In the example picture above, the software shows the S.M.A.R.T information and that the drive is in good health. If problems were detected by S.M.A.R.T., they’d be displayed in this window. Further information can be obtained by reading each of the S.M.A.R.T. attribute values mentioned in the next section.

What type of information can S.M.A.R.T. show?

Below is a full list and examples of the type of information a program with access to S.M.A.R.T can view.

AI, Computer acronyms, Dumb, Hard drive terms

It is up to the viewer and the type of drive you’re using to decide what S.M.A.R.T. attributes are shown.

Most S.M.A.R.T. utilities automatically review all important IDs to give you a good or bad health indication. However, we’ve also highlighted in red the important IDs to view when trying to find problems with a hard drive.

  • How to test a hard drive for failures.
  • Receiving S.M.A.R.T. status bad backup and replace error.
  • Hard drive help and support.