OS X Mavericks download causes SMART error

Unfortunately, I believe that the only solution is to replace the hard disk.

Exact same thing happened to my mac mini when I tried to install Mavericks. Could it be that Mavericks is causing this to happen??

Yes I'm having the very same problem. I bought this iMac in 2012 and haven't had any hard drive/memory related issues with it from day one. I saw on google today that this apparently also happened to people trying to update to Lion as well. Seems weird.

S.M.A.R.T. warnings can mean any number of things, as the S.M.A.R.T. system monitors numerous hard drive parameters. Your drive may be literally seconds away from catastrophic failure, or it may last for a long time - the warnings simply mean one or more parameters is out of spec, but give no indication of just how serious it may be.

Since you have an up to date backup in hand, you can have Apple evaluate it for you - there is no charge for diagnosis, and if under warranty they'd replace the drive (although your data is your responsibility, so the backup is essential). If you are out of warranty, it's likely not worth the hassle - drives are relatively cheap so just get a replacement before that current drive does die completely.

Since disc utility confirmed it, I'd say your timing with Mavericks was coincidental - the drive was almost certainly failing anyway, and the update process just made you aware of it.

same here. However, as the whole system crashed after the installation of Mavericks due to a disk error and I couldn't download Mavericks again (very slow connection here), I had to install Snow Leopard and have been working with absolutely no problem ever since. Now, after 3 weeks, I finally managed to download Mavericks and ... boom ...: this disk has S.M.A.R.T. errors...
Makes one wonder if the disk has errors or the OS?!?!?

Makes one wonder if the disk has errors or the OS?!?!?

If SMART is giving warnings, the hard drive is physically failing. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the OS, nor can the OS cause the hard drive to physically fail.

There are always people who will discover these issues when trying to install a new OS, simply because they hadn't been doing anything previously that would have alerted them to the issue. This is generally a good thing, since had they not had warning, the disk would have eventually failed unexpectedly. For those foolish enough to have no backups, this warning could make the difference between losing all their data and losing nothing.

Granted, the OS will not cause the HD to fail. It is just strange that the alert shows once the new OS is installed and won't once an older OS is running on the same HD.

In order to revert to Snow Leopard, you had to erase the hard drive. This probably eliminated (temporarily) the problems that brought this issue to your attention. Have you checked SMART status with Disk Utility? It should still say the same thing. If it doesn't, I'd still be suspicious that you have a sporadic issue, and the drive is still on the road to failure.

Yep; fuming about it right now.

My 2010 iMac has one of the Seagate STS31000528AS drives. Never had any problems. Checked the drive prior to the upgrade with Disk Utility and no issues.

System was slow after the upgrade. Problems with wakeup (bach ball).

Than, maybe two days later, it stuck completely, not waking up at all after it went to sleep.

The iMac got very hot, didn't respond, so I had to turn it off and pulled the power, let it cool off.

After that, it wouldn't boot anymore and when I booted up in Recovery Mode, the Disk Utility reported the S.M.A.R.T. error.

Coincidence? I really don't think so.

Mavericks is having wake up issues on my MacBook Pro as well.

Now to find a replacement drive for my iMac: Anyone know what else is compatible?

Cheers

Matt

Hi Matt,

as it would take me 400 miles to get to the nearest AppleStore to get me HD replaced, I got a tip from an Apple Reseller who suggested an external drive instead of replacing the internal HD. So I installed Mountain Lion about a month ago on an external drive connected by Firewire and it's been running smooth ever since.

Maybe one day the S.M.A.R.T. report will come true but until then... ;-)

About a year ago I tried to upgrade to mountain Lion and got the smart errors.

After a lot of research I believe there is NOTHING wrong with my hard drive. I was forced to use DiskUtility to restore/copy my internal drive to an external drive (whilst booting off the install DVD ). I then upgraded the external drive to ML and restored it back to the internal drive.

Just done the same procedure with mavericks.

I believe that Apple made a serious misjudgement in stopping installs because of Smart Errors. The reporting is not reliable and many people have unnecessarily replaced good hard drives.

The smart errors said my disk would fail within the week, and 52 weeks later the drive is working faultlessly.

Backup your hard drive, but don't replace it unless it fails.

Same here. Attempts to install Mavericks update and end up got me the same error Gosh.