View Source: SMART - Waikato Linux Users Group

Edit PageHistory Diff Info LikePages
[Acronym] for __S__elf __M__onitoring, __A__nalysis and __R__eporting __T__echnology.

A standard for monitoring the health of [IDE] disks, particularly to alert the user before a disk crashes, but also offering a wealth of information about the HardDisk in general. If you see your [BIOS] refer to S.M.A.R.T., this is it.

For experimentation, grab the [smartmontools | http://smartmontools.sf.net] ([Debian], RedHat, [Mandrake] etc probably have it packaged) and have a look. First enable [SMART]:

 smartctl -e /dev/hd''x''

And then view its information:

 smartctl -a /dev/hd''x''

("a" = all information. "v" = vendor-specific)

Eg:
 # smartctl -v /dev/hda
 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
 Revision Number: 16
 Attribute                    Flag     Value Worst Threshold Raw Value
 (  1)Raw Read Error Rate     0x000f   074   069   025       122340577
 (  3)Spin Up Time            0x0003   098   098   000       0
 (  4)Start Stop Count        0x0032   100   100   020       7
 (  5)Reallocated Sector Ct   0x0033   100   100   036       0
 (  7)Seek Error Rate         0x000f   072   060   030       19550706
 (  9)Power On Hours          0x0032   100   100   000       767
 ( 10)Spin Retry Count        0x0013   100   100   097       0
 ( 12)Power Cycle Count       0x0032   100   100   020       238
 (194)Temperature             0x0022   043   050   000       43
 (195)Hardware ECC Recovered  0x001a   100   253   000       0
 (197)Current Pending Sector  0x0012   100   100   000       0
 (198)Offline Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000       0
 (199)UDMA CRC Error Count    0x003e   200   181   000       23
 (200)Unknown Attribute       0x0000   100   253   000       0
 (202)Unknown Attribute       0x0032   100   253   000       0

It's amazing, it gives you the total running time of the drive, how many times it's been power cycled (!), how many sectors have been remapped (and when!). Definitely one of computings li'l secrets.
2 pages link to SMART:
Last edited on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 9:53:39 am by AristotlePagaltzis
Edit PageHistory Diff Info LikePages