S.M.A.R.T. Disk Utility Should it be enabled?

[abseh1]

S.M.A.R.T. Disk Utility
Should it be enabled
==============
I have the capability to enable S.M.A.R.T. in the BIOS on three computers
Should I enable it...or does it take up too much resources
=====================
What is it's real purpose?
Can it actually predict Disk pending failure?

[Chandler]

SMART monitors the drives' physical atttributes, such as number of read/write retries, head height etc.

It does a pretty good job of predicting failure, but with Windows 2000 and XP there's no need to enable it in the BIOS.  If there is a problem, it will be logged in the Event Logs.  It doesn't hurt to leave it enabled though.  Enabling it in the BIOS only does a quick check when you power on the computer, it doesn't make any difference once Windows is loaded.

[saoirse]

If you're not using any SMART aware tools I would leave this setting disabled.  

Constant SMART traffic (data packets), can eat up some bandwidth.  It's unlikely you'll need that level of real-time reporting anyway.

saoirse

[abseh1]

thank you all for your help/time