I have this hard drive that after the last power outage started having problems. Specifically it wouldn't boot. Right after POST it would complain that the HD supported S.M.A.R.T but it wasn't working and when it tried to boot it would hang on Boot IDE. I tried to recover with Windows 2000 but it didn't even see a HD to recover. I tried loading up Knoppix and it hung trying to detect disk partitions.

I was just about to give up and write the HD off as toasted when I remembered the Ultimate Boot CD. I load it up to do a HD disk check, and to see if it will even recognize the disk. Not only does it recognize the HD, but it runs a full scan of the surface and reports no errors at all. I rebooted the computer and it loaded Win2k flawlessly no issues after that.

So I'm left wondering if maybe S.M.A.R.T is some software that just needed to be reset in hardware on the HD. Needless to say that disk check saved me a lot of time reformatting and reinstalling!