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smartmontools - an open-source HDD diag suite - must read!
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Author:  graysky [ Sat May 03, 2008 3:32 am ]
Post subject:  smartmontools - an open-source HDD diag suite - must read!
I just discovered smartmontools which is an open-source hdd monitoring suite that can read the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System) chip present in your hdd's. In many cases, these utilities will provide advanced warning of disk degradation and failure.

Install it easily via apt-get:
Code:
# apt-get update
# apt-get install smartmontools


You can also install smartmontools for Windows - Windows version is here or just see the windows version link at the sourceforge.net link I provided above.

As always, read the docs, but here are a few quick commands you can run on your hdd's:

Code:
# smartctrl -a /dev/hda
That will display all the SMART info about the disk you specify.

Code:
# smartctrl -t short /dev/hda
That will run a quick self test. You must wait the specified time (1-2 min usually) and then you can view the results by issuing the following command:
Code:
# smartctrl -l selftest /dev/hda


Enjoy!
Author:  Liv2Cod [ Sat May 03, 2008 10:06 am ]
Post subject: 
Where you been, graysky??

I posted about this waaaay back in January '05!

http://www.knoppmyth.net/phpBB2/viewtop ... rtmontools

You young whupper-snappers crack me up!

-- Joe
Author:  ChapmanI [ Sat May 03, 2008 5:26 pm ]
Post subject: 
The one problem with that is that S.M.A.R.T. isn't actually very smart. It doesn't actually do very much. Drives can tick along forever with a pile of SMART errors, or die with a SMART count of zero.

Perhaps you should listen to Steve Gibson's "Security Now: Episode 81" discussion on drive failure rates. It references the Google's Study on Hard Drive Reliability.

Two of the most salient point in the Google study:
Quote:
Out of all failed drives, over 56% of them have no count in any of the four strong SMART signals, namely scan errors, reallocation count, offline reallocation, and probational count. In other words, models based only on those signals can never predict more than half of the failed drives. Even when we add all remaining SMART parameters (except temperature) we still find that over 36% of all failed drives had zero counts on all variables.

and

We conclude that it is unlikely that SMART data alone can be effectively used to build models that predict failures of individual drives.

Gipson also references the Carnegie Mellon University Disk Failures in the Real World paper.
Author:  graysky [ Sun Oct 12, 2008 3:53 am ]
Post subject: 
Found this great wiki article on smartmontools and wanted to share it.
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