Has anyone ever had SMART stats actually usefully predict the death of a drive? The vast majority of uncontrolled (ie, not death by age and natural causes) drive failures are crib deaths with no warning I feel like.
I had some SSDs which reported that they have reached the maximum amount of data that may be written.
I have replaced them promptly, without waiting to see if they will really die.
I also had some new HDDs which have failed the SMART self-tests, so I was able to request replacements. After having once problems with a new HDD, I have always run all the SMART self-tests on all new HDDs, before storing any valuable data on them, and that has proved to be a good policy.
It is, indeed. E.g. by looking on remapped sectors on traditional HDD you may see trend that drive will die soon. Selftests are only way to check surface before you will hit it with real files...
On SSD the most important is wear out and usage data. It may, from one side, indicate that drive needs to be replaces soon and from other - if you see that wear out is too fast - optimise your software/os to prevent that.
I have replaced them promptly, without waiting to see if they will really die.
I also had some new HDDs which have failed the SMART self-tests, so I was able to request replacements. After having once problems with a new HDD, I have always run all the SMART self-tests on all new HDDs, before storing any valuable data on them, and that has proved to be a good policy.