Server-based RAID (configured in your Linux/Windows servers) and newer erasure coding methods are excellent for protecting data after a failure happens, but they have a critical blind spot: they can't predict failures before they occur.
Important context: SMARTDriveAI monitors drives inside your servers—whether they're in RAID arrays you've configured via mdadm, ZFS, or hardware RAID controllers, or using erasure coding in distributed file systems. We don't monitor closed vendor storage arrays (those are separate appliances).
Here's what makes server drive failures dangerous:
Correlated failures: Drives from the same batch, with the same firmware, and similar runtime hours often fail together—sometimes on the same day. When multiple drives in your server's RAID array fail simultaneously, your redundancy is overwhelmed. This happens with both traditional RAID and newer erasure coding striping.
Fail-slow drives: NVMe SSDs in your servers don't always die—they stall. These latency spikes can freeze distributed applications and AI training jobs, forcing expensive restarts even though the drive technically "works."
Real-world example: A Texas HPC center experienced permanent data loss across erasure-coded storage clusters after power events. Months of recovery couldn't restore everything.
The costs go far beyond replacing a failed drive:
For AI/ML workloads: One stalled drive can force you to restart training from the last checkpoint, wasting hours or days of expensive GPU compute time. At cloud GPU rates of $2-8+ per hour per GPU, a single incident can cost thousands.
For production systems: According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute. A drive failure that takes down a critical application for even an hour costs $336,000.
Hidden costs: Emergency vendor support, overnight parts shipping, staff overtime, lost productivity, missed SLAs, and reputation damage with customers.
Early warning of drive failures lets you schedule maintenance during planned windows—avoiding emergency situations entirely.
More common than most IT teams realize, especially with drives installed in the same server or server cluster. Research from major data center operators shows:
Firmware bugs: Certain SSD models hard-failed at exactly 32,768 power-on hours, causing same-day failures across server fleets. When these drives are in your server's RAID array, multiple drives fail together.
Batch effects: Drives purchased together and installed in the same servers often share identical manufacturing defects, causing synchronized failures months or years later.
Environmental factors: Power events, temperature spikes, or vibration in the data center can trigger failures in drives with similar wear levels—all at once across your servers.
Why this matters for server-based RAID and erasure coding: Whether you're using mdadm RAID, ZFS, hardware RAID controllers, or distributed file systems with erasure coding striping, correlated failures can overwhelm your redundancy. Both traditional RAID and modern erasure coding methods face the same challenge.
SMARTDriveAI identifies these risk clusters by tracking which drives in your servers share the same model, age, firmware version, and usage patterns—alerting you before the domino effect begins.
SMARTDriveAI is an enterprise SaaS platform that continuously monitors drive health inside your servers and predicts failures before they happen.
What we monitor: We track drives in your Linux and Windows servers—whether they're standalone drives, part of server-based RAID arrays (mdadm, ZFS, hardware RAID), or used in distributed file systems with erasure coding. We focus on the servers where IT operations has direct control. (Note: We don't monitor closed vendor storage arrays—those are separate appliances with their own management. We also don't monitor cloud based virtual storage.)
Why it matters: According to Microsoft and Alibaba research, over 80% of data center hardware failures are server-related, and over 80% of those server failures are caused by internal drives.
How it works: Our AI models and advanced analytics were trained on over 500,000 real-world drives. We continuously monitor your HDD, SSD, and NVMe drives 24/7, comparing their health telemetry against known failure signatures. When we detect anomalies or predict impending failures, we alert your IT team with actionable insights.
Think of it as having a drive health expert on staff 24/7 — one who never sleeps and has seen every failure pattern imaginable.
Our ML models and analytics were trained on real-world data from over 500,000 drives across multiple vendors, models, and use cases.
What we learned: The majority of drive failures can be predicted based on health and performance data. Some failures show subtle, nuanced changes that require ML models to detect. Others have clear signatures that analytics alone can catch.
Our approach: We use the right tool for each failure type—ML models for complex patterns, analytics for known signatures. This hybrid approach minimizes false positives while maximizing early detection.
We've encoded dozens of known error signatures from multiple drive vendors, continuously updated with real-time failure behavior from our growing dataset.
SMARTDriveAI is purpose-built for drive health monitoring—it's not a general monitoring platform trying to do everything.
Pre-configured expertise: While other tools require you to configure custom alerts and dashboards, SMARTDriveAI comes with predefined dashboards and alerts based on 500,000+ drives worth of learned behavior. You get expert-level monitoring from day one.
Embedded AI models: Other solutions collect data but require you to create your own analytics. We've already done that work, training ML models on massive real-world datasets.
Simpler pricing: Other platforms charge for data storage and have complex pricing models that are hard to predict. SMARTDriveAI is simply priced per server with no additional data storage fees.
Complementary, not competitive: SMARTDriveAI works alongside your existing monitoring tools. Think of it as a specialized expert that enhances your current infrastructure rather than replacing it.
Absolutely. In fact, this is where SMARTDriveAI delivers some of its highest ROI.
AI/ML workloads are especially vulnerable: When a drive in your GPU server or storage node stalls or fails during training, you restart from the last checkpoint—wasting hours of expensive GPU compute time. One bad NVMe drive can cost you thousands in wasted GPU hours.
We support server-based high-performance file systems:
Erasure coding environments: Whether you're using erasure coding striping in distributed file systems or traditional RAID, SMARTDriveAI monitors the underlying physical server drives. Both methods face the same correlated failure risks—we help you spot them early.
For GPU clusters and data lakes, early drive health insight is the cheapest GPU time you'll ever buy.
The beauty of early warning is that you have time to plan instead of scrambling during an emergency.
Typical response workflow:
1. Assess criticality: Is the drive running mission-critical applications? Is it part of a RAID array?
2. Schedule maintenance: Plan the migration during a maintenance window—no emergency overnight work required.
3. Migrate workloads: Move applications and data off the at-risk drive to healthy storage.
4. Replace or reformat: Depending on the drive's age and history, either replace it or reformat and restore to service.
The earlier the warning, the more flexibility you have. Most teams schedule replacements during routine maintenance rather than dealing with emergency failures.
Yes! We offer a 30-day free trial—no credit card required.
Getting started is simple:
1. Click the "Start 30 Day Free Trial" button and fill out the registration form
2. You'll receive an email within minutes with your license key and setup instructions
3. Download our lightweight data collector and install it on your servers
4. Start seeing drive health insights within hours
If you have any questions during setup, contact our team at support@jedaanalytics.com—we're here to help.
SMARTDriveAI supports both Windows and Linux servers.
Linux distributions:
Windows:
macOS: Coming soon!
Don't see your OS listed? Contact sales@jedaanalytics.com to discuss support options.
Installation is straightforward and takes just a few minutes per server.
Step 1: After registration, download the appropriate collector for your OS from your SMARTDriveAI profile page.
Step 2: Uncompress the downloaded package—you'll find detailed installation instructions (README) and all required files.
Step 3: Follow the OS-specific installation steps. The collector is lightweight and designed for minimal system impact.
What gets collected: Only drive health and performance telemetry—encrypted and sent securely to SMARTDriveAI for analysis. We never send anything back to your servers, so no special firewall rules are needed.
Need help? Email support@jedaanalytics.com and we'll walk you through it.
Yes! SMARTDriveAI can work alongside your existing data collection methods.
We integrate seamlessly with the widely-used open-source Collectd data collector, or we can work as a standalone solution.
While SMARTDriveAI collects some important non-SMART system data for better analysis, we can also work with your current SMART collection setup.
Contact sales@jedaanalytics.com to discuss integration options for your specific environment.
SMARTDriveAI uses simple, predictable per-server pricing with no hidden fees.
What's included:
Servers with 32+ drives: Contact sales@jedaanalytics.com for custom pricing.
Visit our Pricing page for current rates, or start with our 30-day free trial to see the value firsthand.
Yes, we offer custom solutions for air-gapped and highly secure environments.
Standard deployment: SMARTDriveAI only requires outbound data transmission (drive health telemetry to our cloud). We never send anything back to your servers, so no inbound firewall rules are needed.
Air-gapped environments: For data centers without internet connectivity or with strict security requirements, we can deploy on-premises or hybrid solutions.
Contact sales@jedaanalytics.com to discuss your security requirements and deployment options.
Our team is here to help you get the most out of SMARTDriveAI.
Sales & Custom Solutions: sales@jedaanalytics.com
Technical Support: support@jedaanalytics.com