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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chscag" data-source="post: 1697955" data-attributes="member: 46727"><p>It's up to you if you wish to reinstall El Capitan, however, a SMART error can be unpredictable. During the installation, the drive may fail.  How did you make the backup?  If you used Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, the backup is generally bootable and you can boot your iMac from that and continue using it until you get a new drive.  I have had that happen on a previous iMac that I owned and was able to use the machine until I got to the Apple Store to have the drive replaced.  However, if your backup was made using Time Machine you will not able to boot from the external drive.</p></blockquote><p></p>