bios question

[madfish]

afternoon all, I was playing around in my bios today and was wondering what these to things mean, now I'm still in learning mode after 3 years so don't laugh to hard, hehehe. this is the machine I was in:Pentium 2 @ 350Mhz in a ASUS P2B mobo, Intel 440bx AGP chipset,100 fsb, 2x agp,4pci,3isa,2 usb,award bios,33.3 mode 2 ultra ata/33 surport.pc100 sdram 3 slots up to 786MB {has 320 now} one western digital 13.6 mode 4 ultra ata/66 hdd,ls120 super disk,1.44 floppy, 56x cd-rom, 10x4x32x hp burner,3com nic,56k modem. What I like to know is, What is these two items in the bios are/mean? IDE HDD Block mode sectors - Disabled. and HDD S.M.A.R.T. capability - Disabled. My h/drive is S.M.A.R.T. system compliant, should I enable it in the bios? and what the heck is block mode sectors? and I'm not sure if the ata mode is enabled, the user guide with the drive says it's backwards compatitable with mode 2 ata/33 and mode 2 dma/16.6. Oh the drive spindle speed is 5400 rpm's. thanks.

[nilknarf]

I think SMART is a drive technology which allows the drive to monitor itself and premptively protect data by moveing it off of potentially bad sectors. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Block mode is a method of drive access which allowed older systems to utilize larger drives. Once again, correct me if I'm wrong.

[scotter]

smart will not save or move your data but if it detects a problem with the drive it will warn you at boot up.
as to the to the block mode for all ne drives set it to MAX