MacBook, S.M.A.R.T Failure and Saving my data!

[crammaz]

Hey,

This morning I awoke to a little menu bar application of mine (S.M.A.R.T Updater) that my HD was in risk of immediate failure.

I double checked in disk utility and was greeted with a similar message, basically your HD is about to fail, please save as much data as you can.

Armed with my trusty copy of Super Duper and my external HD I completed a smart update of my data to a fully bootable clone!

My question though is this, Is there a risk that because I have essentually an exact copy of the drive..... could I have carried any of the S.M.A.R.T errors onto my external drive and thus corrupted that as well?

If so does anyone know of a way to secure my data corruption free??

Super Duper is my fav app, so I have a lot of confidence in its abilities.

Thanks in advance

TC



P.S: if it helps here is my system info.

Macbook 2GHz, 2GB RAM, Black, Western Digital Scorpio 250GB Drive, OS X 10.4.11, Super Duper! (latest version)

cheers

[dnanian]

Since you already have a copy, I'd make a copy onto a totally different volume! Start with "Backup - user files", and if that's OK, then Smart Update with "Backup - all files".

[mikebore]

I had always believed that SMART warnings were nothing to do with corruption, but only about impending hardware failure. SMART tools don't check for corruption....do they?

Also, (for my own understanding since I am not the OP), why did you emphasise making a copy onto a totally different volume? His first copy is already on a totally different volume (external).

Were you simply advising that because his internal has effectively failed he should have two copies?

[dnanian]

SMART warnings indicate the drive has detected a failure state based on various hardware tests.

I recommended a totally different volume because if he Smart Updates his existing drive, and the drive fails in the middle, he'll have damaged, by a partial copy, his only backup.

[mikebore]

Originally Posted by dnanian

SMART warnings indicate the drive has detected a failure state based on various hardware tests.

I recommended a totally different volume because if he Smart Updates his existing drive, and the drive fails in the middle, he'll have damaged, by a partial copy, his only backup.

I understand, good point! Thanks