Hard Disk health check tool Smartmontools

[poshgeordie]

This utility has been mentioned here in passing from time to time, but since so many of us are using older HDD's I thought an actual thread would be helpful.

To quote the Smartmontools home page:

The smartmontools package contains two utility programs (smartctl and smartd) to control and monitor storage systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System (SMART) built into most modern ATA and SCSI harddisks. In many cases, these utilities will provide advanced warning of disk degradation and failure.

Within Ubuntu it's available straight from the repos, and otherwise easy to download and install.

Before it can be used to monitor the HDD, it must be enabled:

Code: Select all

smartctl -a /dev/hda

changing hda for the your HDD label. it also needs to be run as root.

All the common command listings and a good explanation on smartmontools can be found here.