Disable S.M.A.R.T please!

Question

The S.M.A.R.T functionality is not what i want since it makes very annoying noises when the drive is idling and disturbs you. Of course the diagnostics could be a gain if it do detect some problems before i throw the drive away when i buy a new computer (after 2-3 years), but it is not desirable because of the noises it produces. So i want to decide to use it or not by myself. However, it seems that Dell does not offer the user the possiblity to decide if S.M.A.R.T should be enabled or not, since there is no such a option in the Bios for it. The question is how to get rid of it in other ways. I'v tried lots of utilities like active smart, seatools etc but they only shows some statistics about S.M.A.R.T, not the ability to disable it. Since the S.M.A.R.T protocol specification itself includes commands for enable and disable S.M.A.R.T in the drive, i'm looking for a utility that do it for me. Or do i have to write my own utility?? In the worst case i have to throw my new drive away and buy a another one without  S.M.A.R.T.   Dimension 9150, Seagate SATA 160gb. 3 weeks old system.

Mathi.se · Answer

Thank you for your reply. The drive activity is internal within the drive and not caused by some application accessing the drive (indexing service is turned off). The HD-drive led is not active during these activity. This quote is from Seagate's product manual for the Serial ATA Seagate drive: Page 14, 2.10 Table 6 Fluid Dynamic bearing motor acoustics: 'Note. During periods of drive idle, some offline activity may occur according to the S.M.A.R.T specification, which may increase acoustic and power to operational levels.' Im pretty sure it is cause by the S.M.A.R.T since it does not light up the HD led during this activity. The drive is delivered from Seagate with S.M.A.R.T disabled as default, so it seems Dell have turned it on in Bios, with no possibility to disable it. It seems i have to sit and wait and hope for a new Bios, or ask for a replacement drive without S.M.A.R.T then.

ejn63 · Answer

SMART does not cause any undue noise or drive activity. Something else is causing the drive activity - prime candidate would be the indexing service; turn that off.

You cannot disable the SMART feature on Dell systems.

exmixer · Answer

Mathi.se, Fwiw, just installed an ST3160827AS SATA 160GB today w/S.M.A.R.T. No undue noise (hardly any noise at all actually). jb

klbf · Answer

smart is something you would want enabled ad it reports errors, monitors temperature etc of your hdd...

Dimension 8300,
P4 2.80GHz 800MHz w/HT
1GB PC3200
Sparkle 6600GT oc
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS (retail)
Seagate SATA 120,160, USB2 external 200GB
NEC DVD+RW ND-2100AD, Pioneer 16x DVD+/-RW DL DVR-109, HP usb CD-Writer+ 8200
15inch LCD
D-link DSL-G604T Router
HP deskjet 3550
BearPaw 2400TA
USB 2.0 tv tuner, Wacom graphire3 4x5inch, PCI Cooler | 80mm hdd fan
Benchmarks 3dmark03 8446...3dmark05 3498...PCmark05 3448

Storage, Drives & Media

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