How can i wipe the SMART data on a hard disk

Hello everyone. I want to wipe the SMART data for a particular disk.

And to head off the obvious first posts,

• YES i know what i'm doing,
• YES there is a reason for it,
• YES i know it won't actually fix drive problems,
• YES I DO actually want to just wipe the SMART data, and not the data stored on the drive.
• I have already confirmed the drive itself is healthy.

Please do not post those answers, like everyone does on every other forum in existence.

now as to the why;
My drive has a ton of CRC errors built up, which i traced to a failing SATA cable. I have confirmed, with empirical testing, benchmarking, and several other known working cables, that the drive itself is not at fault. It is perfectly healthy. I know this, don't question it.

Now in addition to this, i ordered several replacement cables from a wholesaler, and either due to their incompetence, or sheer misfortune, i was give three broken cables. And in the process of testing these out before returning them, the drive incurred a heck of a lot MORE errors. Most notably, End to End error detection shows data of 19, which is a fail mark.

Because of this, windows is repeatedly requesting to run checks on the drive at boot time. No i don't want to disable these checks, or actually run them. I want to clear the SMART data so it doesn't ask me.

Please provide some information on software that i can use to achieve my objective.

 

Since it's a SATA drive, I'm presuming you're running Vista or later. Maybe the instructions for clearing the dirty bit on this page will help.

 

You cannot is the simple answer. S.M.A.R.T. info is saved on a PROM on the board for the drive. Even if you swapped the board. The first time you boot that drive up, the new board would find all of the bad info about the drive.

 

Thank you. This is not the answer i was hoping for, but it is the correct one, and the only worthwhile one that could be posted. You are indeed correct, it cannot be done. I went and researched PROMs, and it is so staggeringly "cannot be done" it's pretty crazy.


RE: My other issues; I ended up, for various reasons, wiping the drive and upgrading to a new version of windows. That has solved all data/configuration issues, although it seems i will have to live with the screwed up SMART data until I replace the drive.

I am currently engaged in metaphorically shouting at the wholesaler i got the cables from. All three cables being bad, indicates failure to perform random testing on their part.

 

What size drive and what is the percentage shrewed up? Just curiousity. Why install a new Windows on a limited drive? Of course if a small percentage then no big deal. My drive just booted - no drive attached - and it was the sata channel . Swapped with the dvdrom and now it- the dvdrom- has errors. Probably motherboard .-

 

invalid question. the errors are entirely superficial, there is no problem with the drive, and the faulty cables didn't change that. if you've had the same issue,. then you now have the same problem - not really a problem at all, juist annoying.

It's like living with graffiti sprayed on the walls of your house. Theoretically it does nothing, it's just annoying to look at.

 

How did you verify that SMART is the issue?

Windows does not read SMART data to trigger disk checks.

 

Am I correct in saying it "reads"the dirty bit and it should be cleared?

 

Yes sir

The dirty bit being set at a filesystem level. After scanning/fixing, it flips the bit.

fsutil can be used to manipulate it too:

---- Commands Supported ----

8dot3name 8dot3name management
behavior Control file system behavior
dirty Manage volume dirty bit
file File specific commands
fsinfo File system information
hardlink Hardlink management
objectid Object ID management
quota Quota management
repair Self healing management
reparsepoint Reparse point management
resource Transactional Resource Manager managemen
sparse Sparse file control
transaction Transaction management
usn USN management
volume Volume management
wim Transparent wim hosting management