I have a Maxtor HD here that When I boot with it in my PC It says the Smart status is BAD backup and replace. But what I don't understand is that I have this HDD Health tool that I use to check my HD with and it shows that the HD keeps doing better everytime it powers on. Also The nearest T.E.C. Cannot be determined which is a good indication that the HD is healthy. I've been monitoring the HD for a month now and it is doing rather well. I don't understand why the smart error is showing up. This is a Maxtor 91531u3 HD. Can anyone tell me what might be wrong? One explaination I thought of is that it is a UDMA 66 HD using a UDMA 33 cable but I'm not sure if that would generate an error. Also the HD wasn't originally mine so I think that the constant slower transfer rate of 33 MB/sec instead of 66MB/sec might be what is generating the error. I really want to use the HD so I'm just wondering if there is anything really wrong with it. Also the Error has been showing up for years and the HD is doing very wellmuch faster than my other ones that don't generate the error.

I would d/l the diagnostic tools for maxtor drives and let them tell you what's wrong w/ the drive, if anything.

Personally I don't trust SMART. Run the Maxtor diagnostics like Don suggested and run chkdsk /r. If they run ok I wouldn't worry. There are utilities to reset the SMART statistics. I say don't worry because I'm sure you back up your valuable data regularly, right? Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

Smart sucks..i disable it in my bios cuz it is anoying. Smart is really dumb I JUST LOST 287 gigs entertainment!

I agree that you should test using the Maxtor tools. I would also suggest replacing that cable. The difference in the cables is that the faster cable has a ground wire seperating each of the active wires. This is done to supress crosstalk, which can cause errors. The throughput of the drive should improve with the 80 wire cable.