With respect to hard drives, the acronym “SMART” stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. This was built into many ATA-3 and later ATA, IDE and SCSI-3 hard drives. Basically anything after about 2005 should have it.
Ubuntu/Debian:
sudo apt-get install smartmontools |
CentOS/Fedora/RH:
sudo yum install smartmontools |
Gentoo:
sudo emerge sys-apps/smartmontools |
Wiki: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki
smartctl
The program smartctl is used to interface with the SMART features on the drive firmware. Here are a couple of easy things to get started with (however some versions do not have the –scan option):
$ smartctl --scan -d ata/dev/hda -d ata # /dev/hda, ATA device/dev/hdc -d ata # /dev/hdc, ATA device$ sudo smartctl --info /dev/hdcsmartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [i686-linux-2.6.33.1-xedvia] (localbuild)Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen,http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and 7200.7 PlusDevice Model: ST3160023ASerial Number: 5JS9MDKWFirmware Version: 8.01User Capacity: 160,041,885,696 bytes [160 GB]Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physicalDevice is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]ATA Version is: 6ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2Local Time is: Thu Feb 7 09:27:18 2013 PSTSMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.SMART support is: Disabled |
Note that the “SMART support” is listed as available but disabled. To enable full diagnostic checking turn it on with something like this:
$ sudo smartctl --smart=on --offlineauto=on --saveauto=on /dev/hdc=== START OF ENABLE/DISABLE COMMANDS SECTION ===SMART Enabled.SMART Attribute Autosave Enabled.SMART Automatic Offline Testing Enabled every four hours. |
In theory this should only need to be done once and the drive should remember this (because of the saveauto directive). The offlineauto will cause automatic testing every 4 hours. In theory it will wait “nicely” if the drive is already busy so performance should not be seriously impacted.
Testing
Here’s a way to run a “short” off-line test. This tests electrical and mechanical performance of the drive and does read testing.
$ sudo smartctl --test=short /dev/hda=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===Sending command: "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode".Drive command "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode" successful.Testing has begun.Please wait 1 minutes for test to complete.Test will complete after Thu Feb 7 10:13:19 2013Use smartctl -X to abort test.$ sudo smartctl --log=selftest /dev/hda=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 43398 -$ sudo smartctl --log=selftest /dev/hdc=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 37994 7234643 |
The first command starts the test off and it tells you to come back in 1 or 2 minutes. The second command shows how to query the log file to see if anything bad came up. In this case hda was fine (“Completed without error”) but hdc had a very important “read error”. Replace that drive ASAP!