S.M.A.R.T. is designed to detect upcoming failures in the hard drive. Even though you found errors with SMART, it is possible that the hard drive may not fail for several months. It is not a good choice to continue with SMART failed hard drive, however, it is highly recommended that if you are still under warranty that you consider getting the drive replaced before your warranty runs out.
This will avoid you from “click of death” that occurs when a disk drive fails. These failures can be devastating, and usually, cost companies and individuals thousands of dollars and stress.
Check the S.M.A.R.T. status on your HD: Go to MAC Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility > In the left panel, select your HD mechanism.
Look at the bottom of the main window next to S.M.A.R.T. status and see if it says “Verified” or something like “Failing.”, that is not good anyway. You have to boot from OS install disk to run SMART on your hard disk.
Please, backup your HD using MAC time machine for the peace of mind.
- Boot from install disc (Please press the power button, immediately insert install disc and hold down ‘C’ key).
- Select your language and Open Disk Utility from Utility menu.
- Select the HD in the left pane (You can see the manufacturer’s name and the HD model number).
- Click on the Erase tab.
- Choose the Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled). NOTE: if you want to zero the HD (which is a good idea, but does take time).
- Click on Security Options, click the button for Zero Out Data, click OK. The larger the HD, the longer this will take, in some cases several hours.
- Click on Erase and wait for the entire process to finish.
- Click the Partition tab, if you prefer to make partitions on HD.
- Click on Volume Scheme and choose the number of partitions (normally just one unless you have other plans).
- Click on the Options button (located underneath the Volume Scheme pane) and select GUID.
- Click Apply.
- Quit Disk Utility and continue with the installation process to install OS X; when finished, restart, repair permissions, run updates (in Apple Menu > Software Update), and repair permissions again.