When a disk fails the SMART test, the disk has determined that some part of its mechanical mechanism or electronic circuitry is not working properly. By the time a disk fails the SMART test, it is usually so broken that it will most likely fail completely in the near future.
SoftRAID checks the SMART status of all disks that support SMART each time the application is launched. In addition, the SoftRAID Monitor will check the SMART status of all disks that support SMART each time your Mac starts up and every 24 hours thereafter. SoftRAID uses the SMART status not only to check that a disk is running normally but also to see if a disk is more likely to fail. When it detects a disk that is not running normally or is more likely to fail, SoftRAID (or the SoftRAID Monitor) can display a dialog, and write to the SoftRAID log.