The smartmontools package (S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring Tools) contains two open source utility programs (smartctl and smartd) to control and monitor storage systems using S.M.A.R.T. built into most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks.
It is derived from the smartsuite package, and includes support for ATA/ATAPI-5 disks. It should run on any modern Linux system.
Smartmontools provide early warning signs of problems with a hard drive, allowing a backup of data before the complete failure.
ATA Error Recovery Control configuration is supported by Smartmontools, allowing it to configure many desktop-class hard drives for use in a RAID array and viceversa.
Key Features
- smartctl – command line utility designed to perform S.M.A.R.T. tasks such as disk self-checks, and to report the S.M.A.R.T. status of the disk.
- smartd – a daemon that periodically monitors S.M.A.R.T. status and reports errors and changes in S.M.A.R.T. attributes to syslog.
- Run Smartmontools in the background and have it check drives and email when there are issues.
Website: www.smartmontools.org
Support: Documentation
Developer: Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, Guido Guenther
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
smartmontools is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Handy Hard Disk Utilities | |
|---|---|
| NVMe-CLI | NVM-Express user space tooling |
| Smartmontools | Control and monitor storage systems using S.M.A.R.T. |
| scrutiny | WebUI for smartd S.M.A.R.T monitoring |
| openSeaChest | Perform various operations on SATA, SAS, NVMe, and USB storage devices |
| GSmartControl | Graphical user interface for smartctl |
| hdparm | Tune hard disk parameters for high performance |
| sg3_utils | Utilities that send SCSI commands to devices |
| sdparm | Accesses SCSI device parameters |
| nwipe | Secure disk eraser |
| Bonnie++ | Toolkit for testing hard drive and file system performance |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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