Display drive health status in Linux

The smartctl command can be used to display information about the health of a drive, for example, temperature, number of power cycles, read error rate and so on. Sample output below:

toro@moutere:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Hitachi Travelstar 7K100
Device Model:     Hitachi HTS721010G9SA00
Serial Number:    MPCZN2Y0GU5L6H
Firmware Version: MCZOC10H
User Capacity:    98,522,403,840 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   7
ATA Standard is:  ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1
Local Time is:    Tue Aug 10 21:48:06 2010 NZST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
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The smartctl command is found in the smartmontools package.

Sources

• http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net