Smartmontools

This article describes the setup of smartmontools, an utility to read and monitor S.M.A.R.T. informations of disk drives.

BIOS
Often you can enable or disable this feature in your BIOS. Enable it.

Software
Install :

Usage
smartctl is the main tool of smartmontools:
 * smartctl -i /dev/sda - Check, if S.M.A.R.T. is supported.
 * smartctl -s on /dev/sda - Enable S.M.A.R.T.
 * smartctl -H /dev/sda - Read S.M.A.R.T. informations. If the result is  , everything is fine. If the result is  , you should backup your data. The disk drive screwed up or will in the next 24 hours.
 * smartctl -l error /dev/sda - Read S.M.A.R.T. error messages. Shows all reported errors. If the result is  , everything is fine. If there are some old errors, it's also OK. If there are lots of recent errors, backup your data.
 * smartctl -c /dev/sda - Start a S.M.A.R.T. testrun. Shows, which tests are supported. The tests runs in the background, so you can work normally. The list shows, how long the tests will take.
 * smartctl -t offline /dev/sda - Start the a specific test, e.g. S.M.A.R.T. Immediate Offline Test. Outputs, how lont the test will take. The result is later available as error message.

S.M.A.R.T. daemon
The daemon smartd checks your disk drives continuously. is it's config file. See the man page for more informations: man smartd.conf. Errors will be reported to.

You can now start smartd:

To start smartd at boot time, add it your runlevel:

Troubleshooting

 * smartmontools bugtracker: known bugs
 * smartmontools bugtracker: known bugs

External resources

 * smartmontools homepage