NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
- Apoptosis
- Site Admin
- Posts: 33941
- Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:45 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
I know for a fact that the 680i SLI chipset used to have S.M.A.R.T. on it as it was once an option in the BIOS... I just updated my 680i SLI and 680i LT motherboards to the latest BIOS revisions P05 on the LT and P30 on the 680i SLI and both are missing this feature...
What is S.M.A.R.T. -- S.M.A.R.T. For Hard Disks: Enables Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Report Technology - SMART - for the hard disk, in case it has this technology (all new hard disks have it). It is a preventive internal diagnostic facility that is performed by hard disk informing to processor the probability of a possible damage in a near future, thus giving time for the user to backup his data before damage occurs.
S.M.A.R.T. was on the early BIOS revisions... Here is a screen shot with it on there... I think this was revision P23 or P21 BIOS....
What is S.M.A.R.T. -- S.M.A.R.T. For Hard Disks: Enables Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Report Technology - SMART - for the hard disk, in case it has this technology (all new hard disks have it). It is a preventive internal diagnostic facility that is performed by hard disk informing to processor the probability of a possible damage in a near future, thus giving time for the user to backup his data before damage occurs.
S.M.A.R.T. was on the early BIOS revisions... Here is a screen shot with it on there... I think this was revision P23 or P21 BIOS....
- Attachments
-
- big_gb_bios_3.jpg (78.45 KiB) Viewed 8900 times
- Apoptosis
- Site Admin
- Posts: 33941
- Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:45 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
Here is a screen shot of BIOS version P30 that is dated 7/9/2007 on the nvidia 680i SLI that I just took 5 minutes ago... no SMART can be found here or any place else in the BIOS... And boy how the BIOS arrangement has changed since the reviewers have reviewed the board many months ago.
This sucks as how are you supposed to monitor internal temperatures and know about failure issues? I'm going to go out on a limb here, but is NVIDIA going away from an open standard (S.M.A.R.T.) to make people use their NVIDIA MediaShield Storage utility instead?
This sucks as how are you supposed to monitor internal temperatures and know about failure issues? I'm going to go out on a limb here, but is NVIDIA going away from an open standard (S.M.A.R.T.) to make people use their NVIDIA MediaShield Storage utility instead?
- Attachments
-
- no_smart.jpg (120.75 KiB) Viewed 8887 times
- Apoptosis
- Site Admin
- Posts: 33941
- Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:45 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
okay this is weird... was looking around the web and is seems the ASUS P5N32-E SLI (NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI) has S.M.A.R.T. support...
But I guess this makes sense, becuase ASUS designed their own board and BIOS... ECS, BFG Tech, XFX, eVGA and others are all just using the reference design by NVIDIA with their BIOS and are all missing S.M.A.R.T. support... I also found that P28, P29 and P30 are all missing SMART... hum
But I guess this makes sense, becuase ASUS designed their own board and BIOS... ECS, BFG Tech, XFX, eVGA and others are all just using the reference design by NVIDIA with their BIOS and are all missing S.M.A.R.T. support... I also found that P28, P29 and P30 are all missing SMART... hum
- dicecca112
- Site Admin
- Posts: 5014
- Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2004 10:40 am
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
I thought SMART support was hard drive supported? Can you read the SMART info in Windows?
- Apoptosis
- Site Admin
- Posts: 33941
- Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:45 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
not if smart isn't enabled in the BIOS -- all recent hard drives have smart, but doesn't do any good if the BIOS does look at that information.
- kenc51
- Legit Extremist
- Posts: 5167
- Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2005 1:56 pm
- Location: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
Download a tool called "DTemp".dicecca112 wrote:I thought SMART support was hard drive supported? Can you read the SMART info in Windows?
- Apoptosis
- Site Admin
- Posts: 33941
- Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:45 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
yeah I have along with HHDLife, Everest and others... they detect nothing... DTemp just doesn't nothing and HDDLife says no SMART devices found...
If S.M.A.R.T. isn't enabled there is nothing for these utilities to monitor.
If S.M.A.R.T. isn't enabled there is nothing for these utilities to monitor.
- kenc51
- Legit Extremist
- Posts: 5167
- Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2005 1:56 pm
- Location: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
I was answering Dicecca's question, ;)Apoptosis wrote:yeah I have along with HHDLife, Everest and others... they detect nothing... DTemp just doesn't nothing and HDDLife says no SMART devices found...
If S.M.A.R.T. isn't enabled there is nothing for these utilities to monitor.
dicecca112 wrote:I thought SMART support was hard drive supported? Can you read the SMART info in Windows?
- dicecca112
- Site Admin
- Posts: 5014
- Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2004 10:40 am
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
I was asking Nate the question, wasn't asking in General if you can read SMART info in Windows, I know you can. I think we all have been doing too much of this
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
Well that sucks. I currently have an eVGA 680i A1 with the P28 BIOS. I downloaded the P30 some time ago but haven't got around to flash it. After knowing this I don't think I want to anymore.
Why in the World would they disable the S.M.A.R.T. feature? Was it a mistake or on purpose?
Why in the World would they disable the S.M.A.R.T. feature? Was it a mistake or on purpose?
- Apoptosis
- Site Admin
- Posts: 33941
- Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:45 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
Does P28 have smart in it?
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
Yeah, it does.Apoptosis wrote:Does P28 have smart in it?
- Apoptosis
- Site Admin
- Posts: 33941
- Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:45 pm
- Location: St. Louis, Missouri
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
talked with NVIDIA and they said it's enabled by defualt and is no longer a BIOS option... Still doesn't work for me, but I'm moving on.
- mickrussom
- Legit Fanatic
- Posts: 134
- Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:30 am
- Location: Redwood City, CA
- Contact:
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
Award BIOS. Sheesh. Now I know for sure I'm not going to get any NVIDIA chipset based motherboards. That BIOS looks awful similar to BIOSes form the 486 era.Apoptosis wrote:S.M.A.R.T. was on the early BIOS revisions... Here is a screen shot with it on there... I think this was revision P23 or P21 BIOS....
Think for yourself, question authority!
Re: NVIDIA 680i SLI and LT Motherboards Don't Have S.M.A.R.T.
A quick lesson...
S.M.A.R.T. is a passive hard drive feature. That is, once it is enabled, the hard drive collects information, in the background, about any problems that are encountered by the drive. There are plenty of problems (single-bit ECC errors, etc.) that the drive will recover from automatically - and in some cases even fix - without telling anyone about it. In order to see this data - including the drive's own prediction regarding its long-term health - you have to run software that goes to the drive and asks for it.
Almost all BIOS implementations - regardless of pedigree - perform two S.M.A.R.T. operations during POST. First, they go to the hard drive(s) and tell them to enable their S.M.A.R.T. capability. Then, they poll the hard drives to determine whether they are predicting impending failure. If a failure is being predicted, the BIOS will generate an on-screen message and pause. But, if no failure is being predicted, the BIOS does nothing. Now, some BIOS implementations provide a place in their setup screens that allows you to enable or disable this set of operations and some don't. It's going to be rare that you find any recent systems that don't support the feature, however.
BTW, the Windows O/Ss (Win2K and newer) contain support for S.M.A.R.T. built-in. You can go into the WMI repository, using browser or programmatic data extraction, and see the failure prediction status (and even raw attribute/threshold information) for most hard drives...
S.M.A.R.T. is a passive hard drive feature. That is, once it is enabled, the hard drive collects information, in the background, about any problems that are encountered by the drive. There are plenty of problems (single-bit ECC errors, etc.) that the drive will recover from automatically - and in some cases even fix - without telling anyone about it. In order to see this data - including the drive's own prediction regarding its long-term health - you have to run software that goes to the drive and asks for it.
Almost all BIOS implementations - regardless of pedigree - perform two S.M.A.R.T. operations during POST. First, they go to the hard drive(s) and tell them to enable their S.M.A.R.T. capability. Then, they poll the hard drives to determine whether they are predicting impending failure. If a failure is being predicted, the BIOS will generate an on-screen message and pause. But, if no failure is being predicted, the BIOS does nothing. Now, some BIOS implementations provide a place in their setup screens that allows you to enable or disable this set of operations and some don't. It's going to be rare that you find any recent systems that don't support the feature, however.
BTW, the Windows O/Ss (Win2K and newer) contain support for S.M.A.R.T. built-in. You can go into the WMI repository, using browser or programmatic data extraction, and see the failure prediction status (and even raw attribute/threshold information) for most hard drives...