Well I'm not certain in what context they are using it. But I've worked in technology for over 30 years. The only place that acronym is used is for harddrive health monitoring.

S.M.A.R.T which stands for (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology). Its been around since the late 90s. Its very mundane but extremely usefull.

Basically all it does it monitor metrics of a harddrive. For instance most harddrive (pre solid state) spin at 7,200 RPM.. High Performance enterprise harddrives could spin at 10,000 or 15,000 RPM. When you first power on your computer, the drive has to get up to speed. SMART will monitor how long it takes to get the disk up to the proper speed and compare it against a known good quantity. For instance, a healthy drive might take 3 to 5 seconds to reach full speed. But lets say one day it takes 10s to reach full speed. SMART will log the error and then an Operating system that is aware of SMART will see the error and alert you to the fact that something might be wrong with the drive and to backup your data as soon as possible.

Completely mundane, no super secret surveillance. Its quite useful actually. In the erra of solid state drives. It checks other performance metrics like temperature, voltage and how many bytes written over the life time. Some people may not know, but solid state drives when written to, burn off a little bit of material. So if a consumer level drive is written to constantly, like by a database. Its expected lifetime is much lower and can eventually burn itself out. (Hence be careful buying used SSDs).

Smart in the context of watch, phone etc was more marketing to imply that the device is more general purpose computing with software that does more than say just tell time. It also tends to imply WIFI or network connectivity. SMART fridge.. SMART Appliances etc.. Are again just marketing buzzwords for overpriced appliances that they threw electronics on and connected up to WIFI.. Basically (Internet of Things IoT). And yes, a lot may actually collect data and send it to the manufacturer for marketing and research purposes. Which is why as an IT person.. I stick with non-electronic appliances, locks etc.. There are places where things like that are simply not needed and more of a hassle.

Yes data collection etc is a massive problem with devices these days. But I would be cautious of the 5G FUD out there. I've seen some truly cringe inducing theories posted out there and on these boards.

Well I'm not certain in what context they are using it. But I've worked in technology for over 30 years. The only place that acronym is used is for harddrive health monitoring.

S.M.A.R.T which stands for (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology). Its been around since the late 90s. Its very mundane but extremely usefull.

Basically all it does it monitor metrics of a harddrive. For instance most harddrive (pre solid state) spin at 7,200 RPM.. High Performance enterprise harddrives could spin at 10,000 or 15,000 RPM. When you first power on your computer, the drive has to get up to speed. SMART will monitor how long it takes to get the disk up to the proper speed and compare it against a known good quantity. For instance, a healthy drive might take 3 to 5 seconds to reach full speed. But lets say one day it takes 10s to reach full speed. SMART will log the error and then an Operating system that is aware of SMART will see the error and alert you to the fact that something might be wrong with the drive and to backup your data as soon as possible.

Completely mundane, no super secret surveillance. Its quite useful actually. In the erra of solid state drives. It checks other performance metrics like temperature, voltage and how many bytes written over the life time. Some people may not know, but solid state drives when written to, burn off a little bit of material. So if a consumer level drive is written to constantly, like by a database. Its expected lifetime is much lower and can eventually burn itself out. (Hence be careful buying used SSDs).

Smart in the context of watch, phone etc was more marketing to imply that the device is more general purpose computing with software that does more than say just tell time.

Yes data collection etc is a massive problem with devices these days. But I would be cautious of the 5G FUD out there. I've seen some truly cringe inducing theories posted out there and on these boards.

Well I'm not certain in what context they are using it. But I've worked in technology for over 30 years. The only place that acronym is used is for harddrive health monitoring.

S.M.A.R.T which stands for (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology). Its been around since the late 90s. Its very mundane but extremely usefull.

Basically all it does it monitor metrics of a harddrive. For instance most harddrive (pre solid state) spin at 7,200 RPM.. High Performance enterprise harddrives could spin at 10,000 or 15,000 RPM. When you first power on your computer, the drive has to get up to speed. SMART will monitor how long it takes to get the disk up to the proper speed and compare it against a known good quantity. For instance, a healthy drive might take 3 to 5 seconds to reach full speed. But lets say one day it takes 10s to reach full speed. SMART will log the error and then an Operating system that is aware of SMART will see the error and alert you to the fact that something might be wrong with the drive and to backup your data as soon as possible.

Completely mundane, no super secret surveillance. Its quite useful actually. In the erra of solid state drives. It checks other performance metrics like temperature, voltage and how many bytes written over the life time. Some people may not know, but solid state drives when written to, burn off a little bit of material. So if a consumer level drive is written to constantly, like by a database. Its expected lifetime is much lower and can eventually burn itself out. (Hence be careful buying used SSDs).