CountMike said:
Layback Bear said:
Did I understand correctly.

If the SMART tells you your hard drive is good it's a maybe.
If SMART tells you your hard drive is bad replace it.
It's "maybe" in both cases. In second case there could be some exemptions. SMART remembers everything that ever happens to drive, Let's take one condition, your data cable was in bad shape or contacts are not good, it gets few bad sectors, you fix cable and everything starts working good again but bad sectors were marked, bypassed and data sent to spare area. Your SMART health is down to let's say 50% but the drive itself is sill good. In cases like that if no new bad sectors appear, you're still good to go. Same goes for software caused bad sectors, like when power goes out during writing. Bad sectors like that are marked by OS and bypassed but data in them is not valid. Lo level format or safety erase, when zeroes are written to whole disk, can fix that. I have couple of old, formerly abused HDDs, with SMART down to 10% still working fine.
If a drive is throwing SMART errors, no matter the cause, if it's still under warranty, most manufacturers will replace it under warranty. You would have to be nuts not to take them up on it, even if what you get back is a recertified or refurbished drive.