smartmontools 5.41

Smartmontools is a set of utilities for monitoring and controlling SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) enabled hard drives and solid-state drives. It provides various tools and options for querying and analyzing drive health and performance data.

Smartmontools works by sending commands to the hard drive or SSD using the SMART protocol. These commands retrieve data about the drive's health, performance, and various attributes such as temperature, error rates, and remaining lifespan. Smartmontools then interprets this data and presents it to the user in a readable format.

Smartmontools is cross-platform and supports various operating systems including Linux, macOS, BSD, and Windows. It can be installed and used on most common desktop and server platforms.

Some of the main features of smartmontools include: monitoring drive health and status, performing self-tests to check for potential issues, displaying SMART attributes and their values, sending email notifications on drive failure or high error rates, logging drive data for analysis, and controlling advanced SMART features like Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) or Power Management.

Smartmontools can usually be installed through the package manager of your operating system. For example, on Linux distributions, you can use package managers like apt, yum, or zypper. On macOS, you can use Homebrew or MacPorts. The official smartmontools website also provides precompiled binaries for Windows.

Yes, smartmontools can work with external USB drives as long as the operating system recognizes and provides access to the drive. You may need to specify the correct device path when using smartmontools with USB drives.

Yes, smartmontools supports scheduling automatic tests and monitoring. You can set up cron jobs or use other task scheduling mechanisms to run periodic tests or generate regular drive health reports. Smartmontools also supports sending email notifications on specific events or conditions.

No, smartmontools is primarily a monitoring and diagnostic tool. It does not have built-in data recovery capabilities. However, by actively monitoring drive health, you can identify potential issues early and take appropriate actions such as backing up data and replacing the failing drive before it fails completely.

Yes, there are several graphical interfaces and frontends available for smartmontools. Some popular options include GSmartControl for Linux, macOS, and Windows; HDDScan for Windows; and Disk Utility for macOS.

Yes, smartmontools is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. This means it is free to use, modify, and distribute, subject to the terms of the GPL.