smartmontools — The Complete Guide: Drive Health Monitoring for Servers and Workstations
smartmontools is the long-standing toolkit for reading S.M.A.R.T. data from drives, and the engine many graphical tools rely on. It is open source (GPL-2.0 or later), free for any use, and runs on Linux, Windows, macOS and BSD.
smartmontools
smartmontools developers
The smartctl and smartd command-line tools for reading S.M.A.R.T. data, running self-tests and continuously monitoring server disks.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- smartctl — read S.M.A.R.T. attributes, drive information and the error log.
- Self-tests — start a short or long test and read the result.
- smartd — a background service that checks drives on a schedule.
- Alerts — a notice when a value degrades, before the drive fails.
- Automation — fits into scripts and monitoring systems.
Who it suits
A file server, NAS or compute workstation that runs for days — that is where smartd pays off. An alert is only worth something if there is a backup to restore from, so pair it with a scheduled backup. There is no graphical interface; ordinary users will do better with GSmartControl.
Related tools
A graphical front end on the same engine — GSmartControl. For a quick check on Windows — CrystalDiskInfo. To back up a server from the command line — restic.
GSmartControl
Alexander Shaduri
A graphical front end to smartctl for checking disk health, running S.M.A.R.T. self-tests and spotting early signs of failure.
Get it from the vendor
CrystalDiskInfo
Crystal Dew World (hiyohiyo)
Checks the health of HDD, SSD and NVMe drives from S.M.A.R.T. data, with temperature, alerts and background monitoring.
Get it from the vendor
restic
restic project
Fast, encrypted, deduplicated backups — project folders to disk, NAS or cloud storage.
Get it from the vendor
Kopia
Kopia project
Encrypted incremental backup with a GUI and scheduling — to local disks or the cloud storage of your choice.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
The right tool for any computer that runs unattended: set it up once and get early warning of a drive that is starting to fail.