That's a good idea, although it feels kind of dirty to intentionally degrade performance when S.M.A.R.T. can allegedly provide ample warning. I say "allegedly"

That's a good idea, although it feels kind of dirty to intentionally degrade performance when S.M.A.R.T. can allegedly provide ample warning. I say "allegedly" because implementation of S.M.A.R.T. attributes is so inconsistent between drives/vendors, and is often totally undocumented. Most manufacturers seem to provide a Windows program that monitors the attributes, but since they're usually undocumented you're kind of out of luck if you're on another OS...