S.M.A.R.T.

Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology is built into hard drives and solid-state drives to record internal reliability indicators such as media errors, spare-block use, temperature, and operating hours. Firmware and storage utilities can read these attributes, although their names and raw values vary by manufacturer. A warning is not a request to repair the disk with a driver update; it is a reason to copy important data immediately and check the maker's interpretation. Some drives fail without advance warning, so a healthy status is not a substitute for backups. If a storage utility reports a failing attribute, avoid stress tests that write heavily to the disk until the data is safe and a replacement plan exists.