smartmontools

Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System (S.M.A.R.T.) is built into most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks (or at least that is what the manufacturers claim).

smartmontools grew out of the smartsuite project which does not seem to be maintained anymore. The home page for smartmontools is:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

The chief maintainer of smartmontools has a farm of ATA disks and is requesting help with SCSI disks (there is also some SCSI tape test code in there). Even though the support for SCSI devices lags that of ATA devices, smartmontools is still useful.

For example, the "-a" option lists all available "SMART" data (most derived from LOG SENSE responses in SCSI):

# smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.1-9 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Device: FUJITSU MAM3184MP Version: 0105
Local Time is: Tue Mar 11 22:27:38 2003 EST Device supports S.M.A.R.T. and is Enabled Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported

S.M.A.R.T. Sense: Ok!
Current Drive Temperature:     43 C
Drive Trip Temperature:        65 C
Current start stop count:      328 times
Recommended start stop count:  10000 times

SMART Self-test log

Num  Test              Status                 segment  LifeTime
     Description                              number   (hours)
# 1  Background long   Self test in progress ...   -   NOW
# 2  Background short  Completed                   -   830
# 3  Background short  Completed                   -   703

......

A self test can be started manually with:

# smartctl -t long /dev/sda

Hope this tool is of some help. The smartmontools maintainer (Bruce Allen) will welcome feedback.

Doug Gilbert