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<img src="smart_logo.gif" border="0" width="105" height="59" alt="SMART LOGO" />
<br />
<h1><font color="#3333ff">smartmontools Home Page</font></h1>
</div>
<p>Welcome! This is the home page for the smartmontools package.</p>
<font color="#ff0000">
<b>NEWS:</b>
</font>
<ul>
<li><font color="#ff0000">Smartmontools 5.36 (stable) was released 2006-04-16, see
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/NEWS?revision=RELEASE_5_36&view=markup">
NEWS</a> and
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/CHANGELOG?revision=RELEASE_5_36&view=markup">
CHANGELOG</a> for details.
</font></li>
<li><font color="#ff0000">SourceForge CVS architecture has changed 2006-05-12, please read
notes <a href="#CVSInstall">below</a> if you install smartmontools from CVS.</font></li>
<li><font color="#ff0000">A Windows installer version of smartmontools 5.36 was released
2006-06-06, see <a href="#WindowsInstall">below</a>.</font></li>
<li><font color="#ff0000">New RAID controller support (CCISS and HighPoint on Linux,
3ware on Windows) was added, see <a href="#FAQ-RAID">below</a>.</font></li>
</ul>
<font color="#ff0000">
Please report problems (or success!) with the new release to the
<a href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/smartmontools-support">
smartmontools-support mailing list</a>.
</font>
<p>The smartmontools package contains two utility programs
(<font color="#3333ff"><b>smartctl</b></font> and
<font color="#3333ff"><b>smartd</b></font>) to control and monitor storage
systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology
System (SMART) built into most modern ATA and SCSI hard
disks.  In many cases, these utilities will provide advanced warning
of disk degradation and failure.</p>
<p>Smartmontools is originally derived from the Linux <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartsuite/">smartsuite
package</a>, and includes support for ATA/ATAPI-3 to -7 disks and SCSI
disk and tape devices. It should run on any modern Darwin (Mac OSX),
Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, OS/2, eComStation or <a
href="#windows">Windows</a> system. Alternatively, it can also be run
from one of the <a href="#bootable">bootable CDs or floppies containing
smartmontools</a>.</p>
<p>For printing convenience, everything except for the <a
href="#sampleoutput">example output</a> is on a single page.</p>
<hr size="2" />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983">
Monitoring Hard Disks with SMART (Linux Journal, January 2004, page 74)</a></li><li><a href="#howtodownload">How to download and install
smartmontools</a></li>
<li><a href="#PROBLEMS">Serious Problem Reports (system lockup, etc.)</a></li>
<li><a href="#FAQ">Frequently Asked Questions</a></li>
<li><a href="#scsi">SCSI disks and tapes (TapeAlert)</a></li>
<li><a href="#testinghelp">FireWire, USB, and SATA disks/tapes</a></li>
<li><a href="#differfromsmartsuite">How does smartmontools differ from
smartsuite?</a></li>
<li><a href="#references">Useful references on SMART and ATA/ATAPI-5,
-6, and -7</a></li>
<li><a href="#sampleoutput">Example output from smartmontools</a>
<b>smartctl</b> utility</li>
<li><a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/">CVS
repository</a> and <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/">SourceForge's
Project Page</a></li>
<li>Mailing List <a href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/smartmontools-support">Information</a>
and <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=smartmontools-support">Archives</a>
(Archive has <b>Search Box</b> in top left corner). <a href="#altmail">Alternative</a> (and usually up to date) archives.</li>
<li><a name="man"></a>
Current <a href="man/smartctl.8.html">smartctl</a>, <a href="man/smartd.8.html">smartd</a>, and <a href="man/smartd.conf.5.html">smartd.conf</a> HTML man pages generated from CVS.</li>
</ul>
<hr size="2" />
<b><a name="howtodownload"></a>How to download and install
smartmontools</b>
<p>There are different ways to get and install
smartmontools.  You can use any of the procedures below
(the fourth is for Debian Linux only).  Just after "Method 6" below are
some instructions for trying out smartmontools once you have completed
the installation. The
<b><a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/INSTALL?view=markup">
INSTALL</a></b> file contains additional information.
</p>
<b>First Method (Redhat/Fedora Linux) - Install from the RPM file</b>
<ul>
<li>Download the latest binary RPM file (<tt>*.rpm</tt>) from <a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64297">here</a>. 
Don't get the SRPM file (<tt>*.src.rpm</tt>).<br/> SuSE users: use one of the SuSE-specific RPM files.</li>
<li>Install it using RPM.  <i>You must be root to do this</i>:
<pre>su root (enter root password)
rpm -ivh smartmontools-5.32.i386.rpm</pre>
For most users, this is all that is needed.</li>
<li>If you receive an error message, you have probably previously
installed the <tt>smartsuite</tt> package, or RedHat's
<tt>kernel-utils</tt> package, which provide older versions of the
<tt>smartd</tt> and <tt>smartctl</tt> utilities.  In this case you
should use the <tt>--nodeps</tt> or <tt>--force</tt> arguments of rpm to
replace these two utilities:
<pre>rpm -ivh --nodeps --force smartmontools-5.32.i386.rpm</pre></li>
<li>If you want to remove the package (<tt>rpm -e smartmontools</tt>)
and your system does not have <tt>chkconfig</tt> installed, you may need
to use:
<pre>rpm -e --noscripts smartmontools</pre></li>
</ul>
<b>Second Method (Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD/Cygwin) - Install from the source tarball</b>
<ul>
<li>Download the latest source tarball from <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64297">here</a>.
Note: you probably want the most recent stable release. Stable releases have
even-numbered extensions, and unstable experimental releases have
odd-numbered extensions.</li>
<li>Uncompress the tarball:
<pre>tar zxvf smartmontools-5.32.tar.gz</pre></li>
<li>The previous step created a directory called <tt>smartmontools-5.32</tt>
containing the code.  Go to that directory, build, and install:
<pre>cd smartmontools-5.32
./configure
makemake install
</pre></li>
<li> Note that the <tt>./configure</tt> step above is not possible for releases <=5.1-18, you
have to edit the Makefile by hand to change installation paths. For releases >=5.19, <tt>./configure</tt>
can take optional arguments. These optional arguments are fully explained in the
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/INSTALL?view=markup">INSTALL</a>
file. The most important one is <tt>--prefix</tt> to change the default installation directories.<p>
<i>Please note that the default installation location changed in versions >=5.31.</i>
If you don't pass any arguments to <tt>./configure</tt> all files will reside under
<b>/usr/local</b> to not interfere with files from your distribution. For more detailed
information please also refer to the
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/INSTALL?view=markup">INSTALL</a>
document.
</p>
</li>
<li>To compile from another directory (avoids overwriting virgin files from the smartmontools package)
replace <tt>./configure [options]</tt> by:
<pre>
mkdir objdir
cd objdir
../configure [options]
</pre></li>
<li>To install to another destination (useful for testing and to avoid overwriting an existing smartmontools installation)
replace <tt>make install</tt> by:
<pre>
make DESTDIR=/home/myself/smartmontools-test install
</pre>
Use a full path: <tt>~/smartmontools-test</tt> won't work.
</li>
<li>Unless the destination directory is your home directory (or a location that you have write permission)
only root can do <tt>make install</tt></li>
</ul>
<b><a name="CVSInstall"></a>
Third Method (Darwin/FreeBSD/Linux/NetBSD/OpenBSD/Solaris/Cygwin) - Install from the CVS repository</b>
<ul>
<li><p><font color="#ff0000">Due to the new the SourceForge CVS
architecture, the hostname for CVS access has changed from
<tt>cvs.sourceforge.net</tt> to <tt>smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net</tt>.
To update a copy of smartmontools checked out before 2006-05-12, change all
the <tt>*/CVS/Root</tt> files accordingly.
</font></p></li>
<li><p>One of the really cool things about CVS is that you can get
<i>any</i> version of the code you want, from the first release up the
the most current development version.  And it's trivial, because
each release is <u>tagged</u> with a name like
<tt>RELEASE_5_1_18</tt>.  You can see what the different names are
by looking at the <a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/">
CVS repository</a>.  You'll see the tag names in the little scroll
window where it says "Show only files with tag".  All you need to
do to get the latest development code is
(but note that the development code may be unstable, and that the
documentation and code may be inconsistent):</p>
<pre>cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/smartmontools login (when prompted for a password, just press Enter)
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/smartmontools co sm5</pre></li>
<li>To instead get the 5.1-16 release:
<pre>cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/smartmontools co -r RELEASE_5_1_16 sm5</pre></li>
<li><p>This will create a subdirectory called <tt>sm5/</tt> containing the
code.  Go to that directory, build, and install:</p>
<pre>cd sm5
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
make install
</pre>
<ul>
<li>See notes under <b>Second method - install from source tarball</b> for different options to <tt>./configure</tt>
and other useful remarks.</li>
<li>Skip <tt>./autogen.sh</tt> and <tt>./configure</tt> for tagged releases
<= 5.1-18 (RELEASE_5_X_Y, where X = 0 or 1 and Y = 0 to 18).</li>
<li>If you get the current sources (<tt>cvs co</tt> with no arguments or do <tt>cvs up
-A</tt>) then you <i>will</i> need those two additional steps.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>To update your sources to the 5.1-18 release:
<pre>cd sm5
cvs up -r RELEASE_5_1_18</pre></li>
<li>To update any tagged release to the latest development code:
<pre>cd sm5
cvs up -A</pre></li>
</ul>
<b>Fourth Method (Debian Linux) - Install the Debian package</b>
<ul>
<li>
The latest version of the smartmontools package in <i>.deb</i> format is
available at the <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/smartmontools.html">Debian smartmontools
package page</a>.
This package is for the (unreleased) <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/">unstable</a>
distribution.</li>
<li>If you're running Debian <a
href="http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/">stable</a> please download a
backport to stable <a
href="http://www.backports.org/debian/pool/main/s/smartmontools/">here</a>.
These packages are provided by <a
href="http://www.backports.org">www.backports.org</a>.</li>
<li>
You can then install the package using:
<pre>
dpkg -i smartmontools_5.36-1_i386.deb
</pre>
If you prefer to fetch the packages using apt, please read the instructions at
<a href="http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=instructions">backports.org</a>.
</li>
</ul>
<b><a name="CygwinInstall"></a>
Fifth Method (Windows with <a href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a>
installed) - Install the Cygwin package
</b>
<ul>
<li>Starting with CVS snapshot 2005-11-15, smartmontools is part of
the <a href="http://cygwin.com/packages/">Cygwin distribution</a>.
A list of available smartmontools packages and their contents is
<a href="http://cygwin.com/packages/smartmontools/">here</a>.
</li>
<li><p>To update your installation, click on the "Install or update now!"
link on the <a href="http://cygwin.com/">Cygwin web page</a>.
This downloads <tt>setup.exe</tt> to your system.
Then, run setup and answer all of the questions.
Select smartmontools package in the "Utils" category.</p>
</li>
<li><p>The optional source package (<tt>smartmontools-*-src.tar.bz2</tt>)
can be used to build both the Cygwin and the Windows binary packages
on Cygwin.
Refer to the file <tt>/usr/share/doc/Cygwin/smartmontools-*.README</tt>
for details.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<b><a name="WindowsInstall"></a>
Sixth Method (Windows) - Install the Windows package</b>
<ul>
<li>Download and run the latest smartmontools
<a href="http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page">NSIS</a>-installer
(<tt>*.win32-setup.exe</tt>) from
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64297">here</a>.
<ul>
<li>The default install type "Full" creates start menu shortcuts
including an uninstaller, and adds the install directory to the PATH variable.
</li>
<li>Select install type "Extract files only" to disable these extra
components.
</li>
<li><font color="#ff0000">
Virus scanners occasionally produce false positive virus reports for
NSIS-installers, see the
<a href="http://nsis.sourceforge.net/NSIS_False_Positives">NSIS False Positives page</a>.
If this is the case for the smartmontools installer, please send a report to the
<a href="mailto:smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net">smartmontools-support
mailing list</a>.
</font></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p>Or download and unzip the latest smartmontools Windows archive
(<tt>*.win32.zip</tt>) from
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64297">here</a>.
</p></li>
<li><p>More recent (and probably unstable) Windows test releases build from CVS
snapshots are available <a href="http://smartmontools-win32.dyndns.org/smartmontools/">here</a>.
</p></li>
</ul>
<b>After installing it using Method 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 above, you can read the
man pages, and try out the commands:</b>
<pre>
man smartd.conf
man smartctl
man smartd
/usr/sbin/smartctl -s on -o on -S on /dev/hda (only root can do this)
/usr/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/hda (only root can do this)</pre>
<p>Note that the default location for the manual pages are
<tt>/usr/share/man/man5</tt> and <tt>/usr/share/man/man8</tt>.  If
"<tt>man</tt>" doesn't find them, then you may need to add
<tt>/usr/share/man</tt> to your <tt>MANPATH</tt> environment
variable.</p>
<p>The Windows package (see Method 6 above) provides preformatted man pages
in <tt>*.html</tt> and <tt>*.txt</tt> format.</p>
<hr size="2" />
<a name="PROBLEMS"></a><b>Serious Problem Reports</b>
<p>If a serious problem gets reported to us, it gets added to the
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/WARNINGS?view=markup">
WARNINGS</a> file in smartmontools. So far there are only a few problem systems listed.</p>
<hr size="2" />
<a name="FAQ"></a><b>Frequently Asked Questions</b>
<p>If your question is not here, please <a href="mailto:smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net">email
me</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Is the smartmontools File Download/Mail List/Mail Archive/CVS server broken?</b>
<p>SourceForge is a free service, which supports a very large number ofusers and projects. Please check the <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=2352&group_id=1">
SourceForge Site Status Page</a> to see the maintenance schedule and to
learn if SourceForge is experiencing unscheduled system outages or other
problems.</p>
<p>
<a name="altmail"></a>Alternative mailing-list archives are provided by
<a href="http://gmane.org/find.php?list=smartmontools">Gmane</a> and MARC (<a
href="http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=smartmontools-support">smartmontools-support</a>
and <a
href="http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=smartmontools-database">smartmontools-database</a>).</p>
</li>
<li><b>What do I do if I have problems, or need support?  Suppose
I want to become a developer, or suggest some new extensions?</b>
<p>First, search the support mailing list archives to see if your
question has been answered. Instructions are in the following
paragraph. If you don't find an answer there, then please send an
email to the <a
href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/smartmontools-support">smartmontools-support
mailing list</a>. This is a moderated forum: you are not
required to subscribe to the list in order to post your question.
</p>
<p>To search the email archives, first go to the <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=smartmontools-support">
mailing list archive</a>. In the top left corner you will see a
search box: use <b>Mailing List</b> as the type of search. This tool
works very well.</p>
<p>Note that from time to time SourceForge has mailing list problems
and you'll get a message telling you that <i>Either your mailing list
name was misspelled or your mailing list has not been archived yet. If
this list has just been created, please retry in 2-4 hours</i>. If
this happens, you'll have to try again later. Or use <a
href="#altmail">alternative</a> (and usually up to date) email
archives.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>What are the future plans for smartmontools?</b>
<p>My plan is that smartmontools-5.x will support ATA/ATAPI-5
disks.  Eventually, we'll do smartmontools-6.x to support
ATA/ATAPI-6 disks, smartmontools-7.x for the ATA/ATAPI-7 standard, and
so on.  The "x" will denote revision level, as bugs get found and
fixed, and as enhancements get added.  If it's possible to maintain
backwards compatibility, that would be nice, but I don't know if it will
be possible or practical.</p></li>
<li><b>Why are you doing this?</b>
<p>My research group at U. Wisconsin - Milwaukee runs a <a
href="http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/beowulf/medusa/">beowulf
cluster</a> with 600 ATA-5 and -6 disks (300 IBM and 300
Maxtor).  We have more than 50 TB of data stored on the
system.  I also help out with a <a
href="http://pandora.aei.mpg.de/merlin/"> cluster</a> at the Albert
Einstein Institute that has 540 IBM ATA-6 disks (65 TB
total). It's nice to have advanced warning when a disk is going to
fail.</p></li>
<li><b>Where can I find distribution-specific bug reports?</b>
<p>
The smartmontools package supports a number of different operating
systems. Some of those operating systems are also distributed bymultiple sources, and some of these maintain a database of bug
reports. Here are links:
</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_status=NEEDINFO&bug_status=MODIFIED&bug_status=CLOSED&field0-0-0=product&type0-0-0=substring&value0-0-0=smartctl&field0-0-1=component&type0-0-1=substring&value0-0-1=smartctl&field0-0-2=short_desc&type0-0-2=substring&value0-0-2=smartctl&field0-0-3=status_whiteboard&type0-0-3=substring&value0-0-3=smartctl&field0-0-4=product&type0-0-4=substring&value0-0-4=smartd&field0-0-5=component&type0-0-5=substring&value0-0-5=smartd&field0-0-6=short_desc&type0-0-6=substring&value0-0-6=smartd&field0-0-7=status_whiteboard&type0-0-7=substring&value0-0-7=smartd&field0-0-8=product&type0-0-8=substring&value0-0-8=smartsuite&field0-0-9=component&type0-0-9=substring&value0-0-9=smartsuite&field0-0-10=short_desc&type0-0-10=substring&value0-0-10=smartsuite&field0-0-11=status_whiteboard&type0-0-11=substring&value0-0-11=smartsuite&field0-0-12=product&type0-0-12=substring&value0-0-12=smartmontools&field0-0-13=component&type0-0-13=substring&value0-0-13=smartmontools&field0-0-14=short_desc&type0-0-14=substring&value0-0-14=smartmontools&field0-0-15=status_whiteboard&type0-0-15=substring&value0-0-15=smartmontools">Redhat/Fedora Bugzilla Database (Linux)</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data=smartmontools&archive=no">Debian Bug Database (Linux)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&field0-0-0=product&type0-0-0=substring&value0-0-0=smartmontools&field0-0-1=component&type0-0-1=substring&value0-0-1=smartmontools&field0-0-2=short_desc&type0-0-2=substring&value0-0-2=smartmontools&field0-0-3=status_whiteboard&type0-0-3=substring&value0-0-3=smartmontools">Gentoo Bug Database (Linux)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-list.pl?text=smartctl&state=open&state=feedback&state=analyzed&state=suspended">NetBSD smartctl bug database</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-list.pl?text=smartd&state=open&state=feedback&state=analyzed&state=suspended">NetBSD smartd bug database</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-list.pl?text=smartmontools&state=open&state=feedback&state=analyzed&state=suspended">NetBSD smartmontools bug database</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
If you can provide additional distribution or OS-specific bug-database links, please send an email to smartmontools-support.
</p></li>
<li><b>I see some strange output from smartctl. What does it mean?</b>
<p>The raw SMART attributes (temperature, power-on lifetime, and so
on) are stored in vendor-specific structures.  Sometime these are
strange.  Hitachi disks (at least some of them) store power-on
lifetime in minutes, rather than hours (see next question below).  IBM disks (at least some
of them) have three temperatures stored in the raw structure, not just
one.  And so on.  If you find strange output, or unknown
attributes, please send an email to <a href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/smartmontools-support">
smartmontools-support</a> and we'll help you try and figure it
out.</p></li>
<li><b>Why is my disk temperature s reported by smartd as 150 Celsius?</b>
<p>
It's not. Please read the end of the <b>smartd</b> man page (NOTES).
For example, in the message: <br/>
<b>'Device: /dev/hda, SMART Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 94 to 93'</b><br/>
the value given is the 'Normalized' not the 'Raw' Attribute value (the
disk temperature in this case is about 22 Celsius). The
<b>'-R'</b> and <b>'-r'</b> Directives modify this behavior, so that
the information is printed with the Raw values as well, for example:
<br/>
<b>'Device: /dev/hda, SMART Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 94 [Raw 22] to 93 [Raw 23]'</b><br/>
Here the Raw values are the actual disk temperatures in Celsius. The
way in which the Raw values are printed, and the names under which the
Attributes are reported, is governed by the various
<b>'-v Num,Description'</b> Directives described in the <b>smartd</b>
man page. Please see the <b>smartctl</b> manual page for further
explanation of the differences between Normalized and Raw Attribute
values.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>What are the operating system requirements?</b>
<p>
Please see the first section of the
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/INSTALL?view=markup">
INSTALL</a> file.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>What Attributes does smartmontools not yet recognize?</b>
<p>From Maxtor disks (99), (100), and (101). These are not used by
Maxtor in SMART revision 5. They will be used in SMART revision 6,
but the engineering group has not yet decided what to monitor with
these Attributes.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>My Maxtor/Hitachi/Fujitsu disk is only a few days old, yet smartctl reports its age (Attribute 9) as thousands of hours!</b>
<p>On recent disks, Maxtor has started to use Attribute 9 tostore the power-on disk lifetime in minutes rather than hours. In this case, use
the:<br/>
<tt>-v 9,minutes</tt><br/>
option to correctly display hours and minutes.
</p>
<p>Some models of Fujitsu disks use Attribute 9 to store
the power-on disk lifetime in seconds. In that case, use the:<br/>
<tt>-v 9,seconds</tt><br/>
option to correctly display hours, minutes and seconds.</p>
</li>
<li><b>The power-on timer (Attribute 9 raw value) on my Maxtor disk acts strange.</b>
<p>There are three related problems with Maxtor's SMART firmware:
</p>
<p>
<b>1 - </b> On some Maxtor disks, the raw value of Attribute 9 (Power
On Time) is <i>supposed</i> to be minutes. But it advances at an
unpredictable rate, always more slowly than one count per minute.
This is because when the disk is in idle mode, the counter stops
advancing. This is only supposed to happen in standby mode. This
will be corrected in Maxtor product lines released after October 2004.
</p>
<p>
<b>2 - </b> In Maxtor disks that use the raw value of Attribute 9 as a
minutes counter, only two bytes (of the six available) are used to
store the raw value. So it resets to zero once every 65536=2^16
minutes, or about once every 1092 hours. This is fixed in all Maxtor
disks manufactured after July 2003, where the raw value was extended
to four bytes.
</p>
<p>
<b>3 - </b> In Maxtor disks that use the raw value of Attribute 9 as a
minutes counter, the hour time-stamps in the self-test and ATA error
logs are calculated by right shifting 6 bits. This is equivalent to
dividing by 64 rather than by 60. As a result, the hour time stamps
in these logs advance 7% more slowly than they should. Thus, if you
do self-tests once per week at the same time, instead of the
time-stamps being 168 hours apart, they are 157 hours apart. This is
also fixed in all Maxtor disks manufactured after July 2003.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>The time stamps in the self-test log of my Western Digital (WD) disk
don't correspond to the power-on time when the test was run</b>
<p>
The self-test log timestamps in many WD disks roll back to zero every
1092 hours (65536 minutes). This problem is due to a WD firmware bug.
The power-on lifetime in hours is correctly stored in Attribute
9. However when the power-on lifetime is calculated for self-test log
entries, the lifetime in minutes is put into a 16-bit register then
divided by 60. The 16-bit register overflows and wraps around every
1092 hours.
</p>
<p>For WD drives that exhibit this firmware bug, the relationship between
Attribute 9's raw value (H) and the time-stamps in the self-test log (h) are given by:<br/>
Let H = power on hours as shown by Attribute 9 (correct)<br/>
Let M = 60*H (power on minutes, correct)<br/>
Let m = M mod 65536 (incorrect value of power on minutes)<br/>
Let h = m/60 (incorrect value of power on hours, shown in self-test log)
</p>
</li>
<li><b>The (normalized) WORST Attribute values of my Western Digital
(WD) disk are <u>larger</u> than the (normalized) CURRENT Attributevalues</b>
<p>Western Digital firmware initializes SMART Attributes 10, 11, and
199 after either 120 spin-ups or 8 power-on hours. Until that time,
they have the uninitialized value 253.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>Where can I find manufacturer-specific disk-testing
utilities?</b>
<p>A good listing of such utilities can be found <a
href="http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd2.html">here</a>.
Unfortunately most of these are for MS operating systems, but most can
be run from an MS-DOS boot disk or from the UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD,
see <a href="#bootable">below</a>).
</p>
<p>Note: if you do run one of these utilities, and it identifies the
meanings of any SMART Attributes that are not known to smartmontools,
please report them to the mailing list above.
</p>
<p>These utilities have an important role to fill. If your disk has
bad sectors (for example, as revealed by running self-tests with
smartmontools) and the disk is not able to recover the data from those
sectors, then the disk will <i>not</i> automatically reallocate those
damaged sectors from its set of spare sectors, because
forcing the reallocation to take place may entail some loss of data.
Because the commands that force such reallocation are
<i>Vendor Specific</i>, most manufactuers provide a utility for this
purpose. It may cause data loss but can repair damaged sectors (at
least, until it runs out of replacement sectors).
</p>
</li>
<li><b>When I run <tt>smartd</tt>, the SYSLOG <tt>/var/log/messages</tt>
contains messages like this:</b>
<pre>smartd: Reading Device /dev/sdv
modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module block-major-65</pre>
<p>This is because when <tt>smartd</tt> starts, if there is no
configuration file, it looks for all ATA and SCSI devices to monitor
(matching the pattern <tt>/dev/hd[a-t]</tt> or
<tt>/dev/sd[a-z]</tt>).  The log messages appear because your
system doesn't have most of these devices.</p>
<p>The solution is simple: use the <tt>smartd</tt> configuration file
<tt>/etc/smartd.conf</tt> to specify which devices to monitor.</p></li>
<li><b>What's the story on IBM SMART disks?</b>
<p>Apparently some of the older SMART firmware on IBM disks can
interfere with the regular operation of the disk.  If you have this
problem, here are some links:<br/>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/dtla_update/">Geocities Site</a>,
<a href="http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-42215">IBM Site #1</a>,
<a href="http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-42215">IBM Site #2</a><br/>
to an IBM Firmware Upgrade that fixes the problem.
</p></li>
<li><b>How can I check that the package hasn't been tampered with?</b>
<p>Since the <tt>smartmontools</tt> utilities run as root, you might
be concerned about something harmful being embedded within
them. Starting with release 5.19 of <tt>smartmontools</tt>, the .rpm
files and tarball have been GPG signed. The tarball's fingerprint is
given in a file on the release page with a name like
<tt>smartmontools-5.32.tar.gz.asc</tt>. Please verify these using
the
<a href="SmartmontoolsSigningKey_2005.txt">Smartmontools GPG Signing Key (current)</a><a href="SmartmontoolsSigningKey.txt">Smartmontools GPG Signing Key (before 2005)</a>
</p></li>
<li><b>Is there a bootable standalone CD or floppy that contains smartmontools?</b>
<p>If you have a system that is showing signs of disk trouble (for
example, it's unbootable and the console is full of disk error
messages) it can be handy to have a version of smartmontools that can
be run off of a bootable CD or floppy to examine the disk's SMART data and run
self-tests. This is also useful if you want to run Captive Self-Tests
(the <b><tt>-<font size="+2">C</font></tt></b> option of
<b><tt>smartctl</tt></b> ) on disks that can not easily be unmounted,
such as those hosting the Operating System files. Or you can use
this to run <tt>smartctl</tt> on computers that don't use Linux as the
day-to-day operating system.</p>
<p><a name="bootable"></a>Here is a list of such bootable CDs:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.lnx-bbc.org/">LNX-BBC Bootable CD</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.stresslinux.org/">Stresslinux Bootable CD</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/">RIP (Recovery Is Possible) Bootable CD</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page">SystemRescueCd</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gpstudio.com/stux/">STUX Bootable CD</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html">Knoppix Bootable CD</a>
(Version 3.6 contains smartmontools 5.32, older versions contain
<a href="#differfromsmartsuite">smartsuite</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.grml.org/">Grml Bootable CD</a>
(Knoppix and Debian based CD without KDE and OpenOffice but about 800
<a href="http://www.grml.org/features/list.html">packages</a> added)</li>
<li><a href="http://smartlinux.sourceforge.net/">S.M.A.R.T. Linux</a>
(a bootable FLOPPY containing smartmontools!)</li>
<li><a href="http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/">Ultimate Boot CD</a>
(The "Full" version of UBCD 3.0 contains
<a href="http://www.inside-security.de/insert_en.html">INSERT</a> with smartmontools 5.32
<a href="http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/insert/start.html#TOCChanges">added</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.911cd.net/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t13459.html">Smartctl Plugin</a>
for <a href="http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/">BartPE bootable live windows CD</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
Please let me know if there are others, and I will add them to this
list.
</p>
</li>
<li><a name="FAQ-RAID"></a><b>Can I monitor disks behind RAID controllers?</b>
<p>
RAID controllers typically simulate a (logical) disk for each array of
(physical) disks to the OS.
Access to SMART functionality relies on ATA or SCSI pass through I/O controls
providing direct access to each physical disk.
But the standard I/O controls available are usually not designed to make this
distinction between logical and physical disks.
Therefore, smartmontools has to use vendor specific I/O controls.
Support for disks behind RAID controllers is highly dependent on both platform
and controller type.
</p>
<ul>
<li><p>
3ware RAID controllers are supported on Linux since smartmontools release 5.1-18.
Support for char devices /dev/tw* was added in release 5.33.
</p></li>
<li><p>
3ware support on FreeBSD is available since release 5.33, multiple controller and
char device support was added in release 5.36.
</p></li>
<li><p><font color="#ff0000">
3ware 9000 support for Windows was added 2006-09-27, the corresponding 3ware
driver 9.4.0 was released 2006-11-01.
</font></p></li><li><p><font color="#ff0000">
HighPoint RocketRAID support for Linux was added 2006-08-25.
</font></p></li>
<li><p><font color="#ff0000">
CCISS (Compaq Smart Array Controller) support for Linux was added 2006-10-09.
</font></p></li>
</ul>
<p>
The recent additions will appear in upcoming release 5.37.
</p>
<p>
See<b>
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/INSTALL?view=markup">INSTALL</a>
</b>file for information about kernel and driver requirements on your platform,
and the <a href="#man">man pages</a> for controller specific smartmontools options or
directives (<tt>-d 3ware,N</tt>, <tt>-d cciss,N</tt>, <tt>-d hpt,L/M/N</tt>).
</p>
</li>
<li><a name="windows"></a><b>Does it work on Windows?</b>
<p>Yes, finally it does. A windows port of smartctl 5.26 by
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/users/chrfranke/">Christian Franke</a>
was first checked in 2004/02/23 on CVS branch
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/?pathrev=RELEASE_5_26_WIN32_BRANCH">
RELEASE_5_26_WIN32_BRANCH</a> and has been merged to the CVS trunk later.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a> environment can be
used to built both Cygwin and Windows (using <a href="http://www.mingw.org/">MinGW</a>)
versions of smartctl and smartd.
Installation instructions for binary distributions can be found
<a href="#CygwinInstall">here</a> and <a href="#WindowsInstall">here</a>.</p>
</li>
<li><b>Why did the release version scheme change?</b>
<p>It was non-standard. So with the move to GNU Autoconf and GNU
Automake it changed from 5.X-Y (where X and Y are one or more digits)
to 5.Y. Starting with the first release, and moving forward in time, the releases are
numbered as follows:<br/>
<tt>
5.0-1,
5.0-2,
...,
5.0-45,
5.1-1,
...,
5.1-18,
5.19,
5.20,
...
</tt>
</p>
</li>
<li><a name="FAQ-database"></a><b>My ATA drive is not in the smartctl/smartd database. Does this break anything? How do I get it added?</b>
<p>
If your drive is not in the database, then the
<i>names</i> of the Attributes (displayed in the <tt>ATTRIBUTE_NAME</tt> column of
<tt>smartctl -A /dev/hd?</tt>) and the <i>format</i> of the the raw Attribute
values shown in the <tt>RAW_VALUE</tt> column may be incorrect. This
is mostly cosmetic: the essential drive health monitoring/testing
functionality of <b>smartmontools</b> does <i>not</i> depend upon the
database.
</p>
<p>
<b> If your drive is not in the database, pleaes check <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64297">here</a>
to be sure that you are using the latest smartmontools release. Each
new release has additional drives added to the database. Please do
not submit a new drive for the database without checking to see if it
is already in the database of the current smartmontools release
version.
</b>
</p>
<p>
<b> If your drive is not in the database of the current release,</b>
to have it added to the database, first use the command:<br/>
<tt>smartctl -t short /dev/hd?</tt><br/> to run a short self-test on
the drive, and wait a few minutes for the test to complete. Then
email the entire output from:<br/> <tt>smartctl -a /dev/hd?</tt><br/>
to <a
href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/smartmontools-database">smartmontools-database</a>
as a plain-text ASCII email attachment (file type: ".txt"). The timestamp
in the self-test log will help us to determine whether Attribute 9 is
being used to store the lifetime in hours, minutes, or seconds.
</p>
<p>
If you need to use any of the vendor-specific display options
(<tt>-v</tt> options) with the drive, or if any of the Attributes are
behaving strangely, please include that information as well.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>My ATA drive is failing its self-tests, but its SMART health status is 'PASS'. What's going on?</b>
<p>
If your ATA drive supports self-tests, you should run them on a
regular basis, for example one per week:
<br/><tt>smartctl -t long /dev/hd?</tt><br/>
After the test has completed, you should examine the results with:
<br/><tt>smartctl -l selftest /dev/hd?</tt><br/>
</p>
<p>
If the drive fails a self-test, but still has 'PASS' SMART health
status, this usually means that there is a corrupted sector on the
disk, which can not be read. If the disk were able to read that
sector of data, even once, then the disk firmware would mark the
sector as 'bad' and then allocate a spare sectors to replace it. But
if the disk can't read the sector even once, then it won't reallocate
the sector, in hopes of being able, at some time in the future, to
read the data from it. See <a
href="http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/BadBlockHowTo.txt">BadBlockHowTo</a>
for instructions about how to force this sector to reallocate (Linux
only).
</p>
<p>
The disk still has passing health status because the firmware has not
found other signs of trouble, such as a failing servo.
</p>
<p>
Such disks can often be repaired by using the disk manufaturer's 'disk
evaluation and repair' utility. Beware: this may force reallocation
of the lost sector and thus corrupt or destroy any file system on the
disk. See <a
href="http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/BadBlockHowTo.txt">BadBlockHowTo</a>
for generic Linux instructions.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>smartd is warning that my ATA disk has unreadable or uncorrectable or pending sectors. What's going on?</b>
<p>Disk drives store data in blocks (sectors) of 512 bytes. Each 512
bytes has additional bytes appended to it (usually 40 to 60) which are
used internally by the disk firmware for error checking/detection and
correction. These are called ECC bytes.
</p>
<p>
Sometimes the data in a sector gets corrupted. This can happen
because a speck of dust scratched the disk, or because the disk was
powered down while writing data to that sector, or for other reasons.
Usually the ECC bytes can be used to correct the corrupted data.
However if the ECC bytes are inconsistent or can't be used to correct
the bad data, then the 512 bytes of data are lost. Such a sector is
called unreadable or uncorrectable.
</p>
<p>
If your disk has an unreadable sector, this means that some of your
data can't be retrieved. You can force the disk to replace the
unreadable sector with a spare good sector, but only at the price of
losing the 512 bytes of data forever.
</p>
<p>
Disks with uncorrectable sectors can often be repaired by using the
disk manufaturer's 'disk evaluation and repair' utility (see previous
FAQ entry). Beware: this may force reallocation of the lost sector
and thus corrupt or destroy any file system on the disk. See <a
href="http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/BadBlockHowTo.txt">BadBlockHowTo</a>
for generic Linux instructions.
</p>
<p>
Normally when an uncorrectable sector is found, the disk puts this
onto a 'pending sector list' to indicate that it should be replaced
with a spare good sector. However this replacement won't take place
until either the disk can read the data on the bad sector, or is
commanded to write new data to that bad sector.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>My computer's BIOS has a SMART enable/disable setting. What
does it do, and how should I set it?</b>
<p>
Some type of BIOS can check the SMART health status of a disk at
bootup: the equivalent of '<tt>smartctl -H /dev/hd?</tt>'. This one-time check on
bootup is done if the BIOS SMART setting is set to 'ENABLE', and is
not done if the setting is set to 'DISABLE'.
</p>
<p>
If this one-time check is done, and the disk's health status is found
to be 'FAIL', then typically the BIOS will display an error message
and refuse to boot the machine.
</p>
<p>
For the proper functioning of smartmontools, either BIOS setting may
be used.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>My Fedora Core Linux system displays the startup message: smartd [FAILED]</b>
<p>
Fedora Core is distributed with a smartd configuration file
/etc/smartd.conf that monitors the first IDE disk /dev/hda. If this
device does not exist (or lacks SMART capability) you will get the
error message above. Look in SYSLOG (/var/log/messages) for
additional details about what is going wrong.
</p>
<p>The solution: If your system has only SCSI disks, or has IDE disk(s)
on a non-primary controller, just edit /etc/smartd.conf to reflect the
correct location of the drive(s). Please also read the 'smartd.conf'
man page for additional information.
</p>
</li>
<li><b>Attribute 194 (Temperature Celsius) behaves strangely on my Seagate disk</b>
<p>
Some Seagate disks store the current temperature Celsius in both the
RAW and NORMALIZED Attribute 194 values, and the maximum lifetime
temperature in Celsius in the WORST value. Since cooler is better,
this means that in this case, <i>lower</i> NORMALIZED Attribute values
are farther from failure, and that over time the WORST Attribute
values get <i>larger</i>, not <i>smaller</i> (as with other
Attributes).
</p>
</li>
<li><b>What's this smartctl message mean?: Warning: ATA error count 9 inconsistent with error log pointer 5</b>
<p>
The ATA error log is stored in a circular buffer, and the ATA
specifications are unambiguous about how the entries should be
ordered. This warning message means that the disk's firmware does not
strictly obey the ATA specification regarding the ordering of the
error log entries in the circular buffer. Smartmontools will correct
for this oversight, so this warning message can be safely ignored by
users. (On the other hand, firmware engineers: please read the ATA
specs more closely then fix your code!).
</p>
</li>
<li><a name="FAQ-win-ata-as-scsi"></a><b>On Windows, smartctl aborts
with the message "...SMART_GET_VERSION failed". What is going wrong?</b>
<p>
A failing
<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/Storage_r/hh/Storage_r/k307_2a8bcdd5-f85d-4228-b59c-bba2cc3211ee.xml.asp">
SMART_GET_VERSION</a> call means that the device driver does not
implement the I/O controls (see <a href="#FAQ-win-ioctl">below</a>)
to access ATA SMART functionality.
</p>
<p>
Some Windows drivers for (S)ATA controllers are implemented as SCSI
class drivers. This is usually the case for drivers which support RAID.
Unfortunately, such drivers do not support the ATA specific SMART I/O
controls.
</p>
</li>
<li><a name="FAQ-win-ioctl"></a><b>On Windows, smartctl prints the
message: "...Log Read failed: Function not implemented". What is
going wrong?</b>
<p>
This means that the device driver does not support the command
SMART READ LOG.
<u>The message does not indicate a hard disk problem!</u>
It does also not mean that the disk itself does not support SMART
logs. It may still be possible to read the logs with a Linux version
of smartmontools run from some <a href="#bootable">bootable CD</a>.
</p>
<p>
To access ATA SMART functionality on Windows, smartmontools uses the
I/O control calls
<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/Storage_r/hh/Storage_r/k307_8c974d08-3752-4442-82a5-cc13835ba482.xml.asp">
SMART_RCV_DRIVE_DATA</a> and
<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/Storage_r/hh/Storage_r/k307_2b043284-934c-4440-a4a4-6078f1bc845d.xml.asp">
SMART_SEND_DRIVE_CMD</a>.
These calls were available since Win95 OSR2.
An example program from Microsoft can be found
<a href="http://download.microsoft.com/download/winddk/sample3/9x/W9X/EN-US/SmartApp.exe">here</a> (the related KB article 208048 is no longer available).
</p>
<p>
Starting with NT4, these calls do more restrictive parameter checks.
In particular, the command codes for SMART READ LOG and ABORT SELF-TEST
are not accepted. To perform these functions, smartmontools uses the
undocumented functions SCSIOP_ATA_PASSTHROUGH (NT4) or
IOCTL_IDE_PASS_THROUGH (2000/XP) instead.
An example program using these calls can be found
<a href="ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/listings/0207-218.zip">here</a>,
a related newsgroup thread is
<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.development.device.drivers/browse_frm/thread/e9763262823e11d1">
here</a>.
</p>
Unfortunately, these undocumented functions are not implemented in
most vendor specific ATA device drivers. Smartctl prints a
"Function not implemented" message in this case.
<p>
A new I/O control call
<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/Storage_r/hh/Storage_r/k307_e93738e1-b773-452b-8776-854f9c616967.xml.asp">
IOCTL_ATA_PASS_THROUGH</a> is available since Win2003 and XP SP2.
It should be supported by most new drivers. Experimental code using
this call was added 2006-04-27 and will appear in smartmontools
release 5.37.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<hr size="2" /><a name="scsi"></a><b>SCSI disks and tapes
(TapeAlert)</b>
<p>Smartmontools for SCSI disks and tapes (including medium changers) is
discussed on a separate <a href="smartmontools_scsi.html">page</a>.
</p>
<hr size="2" /><a name="testinghelp"></a><b>FireWire, USB, and SATA
disks/systems</b>
<p>As for USB and FireWire (ieee1394) disks and tape drives, the news
is not good. They appear to Linux as SCSI devices but their
implementations do not usually support those SCSI commands needed by
smartmontools. The ieee1394 consortium recently certified the <span
style="font-style: italic;">first</span> external enclosure (containing
a ATA disk and a protocol bridge) as being compliant to the relevant
standards. Such devices have already been on the market for about 3
years and they tend to only support the bare minimum of commands
needed for device operation (i.e. SMART support is an unsupported
extra).<br />
</p>
<p>Smartmontools should work correctly with SATA drives under both
Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, <i>if</i> you use the standard IDE drivers
in <tt>drivers/ide</tt>. If you use the new <tt>libata</tt> drivers,
it won't work correctly because <tt>libata</tt> doesn't yet support
the needed ATA-passthrough ioctl() calls. Jeff Garzik, the
<tt>libata</tt> developer, says that this support will be added to
libata in the future. When this happens, we'll add support to
smartmontools for a new SATA/libata device type <tt>'-d sata'</tt>.
Typically, to force an SATA disk to run using the standard
(non-libata) drivers, you must use the BIOS to select "legacy mode"
for the controller. If the IDE driver doesn't support your particular
SATA controller, or the controller doesn't have a legacy interface,
then only libata can be used. Unless the hard disk controller on the
system motherboard is Intel, VIA or nVidia, standard IDE drivers may
not work
</p>
<p>Note: an unofficial <a
href="http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&threadm=2yY8S-4ps-33%40gated-at.bofh.it&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3DLinville%2520ioctls%2520SMART%26num%3D100%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26tab%3Dwg">
patch to libata</a> that allows smartmontools to be used
with the standard '-d ata' device type was posted to the linux
kernel mailing list at the end of August 2004. The patch is included in the
<a href="http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/libata/">libata-dev
patchset</a> that can be applied to a recent Linux kernel (>= 2.6.9). With aSATA disk driven by a libata driver, smartmontools can now be used by specifying both the
device type 'ata' and the SCSI device corresponding to this disk, for example,
<tt>smartctl -i -d ata /dev/sda</tt>.
The patch is still under development and it is probably best to make sure that
the disk is idle before trying smartmontools.
</p>
<hr size="2" /><a name="differfromsmartsuite"></a><b>How does
smartmontools differ from smartsuite?</b>
<p>The smartsuite code was originally developed as a Senior Thesis by
Michael Cornwell at the Concurrent Systems Laboratory (now part of the
<a href="http://ssrc.soe.ucsc.edu/">Storage Systems Research
Center</a>), Jack Baskin School of Engineering, University of
California, Santa Cruz.
You can find some information about the original smartsuite project here:
<a href="http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/archive/99-00/09-99/smart_software.htm">Press Release 1</a>,
<a href="http://www.santa-cruz.com/archive/1999/September/22/local/stories/5local.htm">Press Release 2</a>,
<a href="http://www.ucsc.edu/currents/99-00/09-27/smart.html">Press Release 3</a>.
</p>
<p>
According to <a href="http://csl.cse.ucsc.edu/">SSRC</a>
smartsuite is no longer maintained; the last release was in 2001.
</p>
<p>Smartmontools was derived directly from smartsuite.  It differs
from smartsuite in that it supports the ATA/ATAPI-5 standard.  So
for example <tt>smartctl</tt> from smartsuite has no facility for
printing the SMART self-test logs, and doesn't print timestamp
information in the most usable way.  The <tt>smartctl</tt> utility
in smartmontools has added functionality for this (<tt>-q, -l selftest,-S,
-T, -v and -m</tt> options), updated documentation, and also fixes small
technical bugs in smartsuite. [One example: smartsuite does not actually use the
ATA SMART RETURN STATUS command to find out the health status of a disk. It instead tries to infer this from the
SMART Attribute values.]  See the
<a href="http://smartmontools.cvs.sourceforge.net/smartmontools/sm5/CHANGELOG?view=markup">CHANGELOG</a>
file in CVS for a summary of what's been done.  The <tt>smartd</tt>
utility differs from the smartsuite <tt>smartd</tt> in major ways. 
First, it prints somewhat more informative error messages to the syslog.
  Second, on startup it looks for a configuration file
<tt>/etc/smartd.conf</tt>, and if <tt>smartd</tt> finds this file, it
monitors the list of devices therein, rather than querying all IDE and
SCSI devices on your system.  (If the configuration file does not
exist, then it does query all IDE and SCSI devices.)  Also, it's
a well-behaved daemon and doesn't leave open file descriptors and other
detrius behind.  In addition, the <tt>smartmontools</tt> version of
<tt>smartd</tt> can be instructed (via Directives in the configuration
file) to monitor for changes in a number of different disk properties:
the SMART status, failure or prefailure attributes going below
threshold, new errors appearing in the ATA Error Log or the SMART
Self-Test Log, and so on. <tt>smartd</tt> can also send an email warning or run a
user-specified executable if it detects a problem with the disk.
</p>
<p>The other principle difference is that smartmontools is an
OpenSource development project, meaning that we keep the files in CVS,
and that other developers who wish to contribute can commit changes to
the archive. If you would like to contribute, please write to to <a
href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/smartmontools-support">smartmontools-support</a>.</p>
<p>But the bottom line is that the code in smartmontools is derived
directly from smartsuite and is similar.  The smartsuite package
can be found <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartsuite/">here</a>.</p>
<hr size="2" /><a name="references"></a><b><big>Useful references on
SMART and the ATA/ATAPI standards</big></b>
<p><big>If you are having trouble understanding the output of smartctlor smartd, please first read the manual pages installed on your
system:</big></p>
<pre>
man 8 smartctl
man 8 smartd
man 5 smartd.conf
</pre>
<p>
Here are on-line versions of the smartmontools man pages:<br/> <a
href="man/smartctl.8.html">smartctl manual page</a><br/> <a
href="man/smartd.8.html">smartd manual page</a><br/> <a
href="man/smartd.conf.5.html">smartd.conf manual page</a><br/> Note
that these are the manual pages for the <b><i>current version</i></b>
of smartmontools in the developers CVS repository; they might not
correspond to the (possibly older) version of smartmontools installed
on <i>your</i> system. So the manual pages installed on your system
should be regarded as definitive for your installation.</p>
<p><big>If you'd like to know more about SMART, then the following
references may be helpful:</big></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983">Monitoring Hard Disks with SMART (Linux Journal, Jan 2004)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://lea-linux.org/cached/index/Hardware-hard_plus-smart.html">Soyez Smart (Francais) from GNU Linux Magazine France n68,</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2004/10/056-smartmontools/">Vorbeugen statt Crash (Deutsch)</a>
from <a href="http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2004/10">LinuxUser 2004/10</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/49/Monitoring_Hard_Disks_with_smartmontools.pdf">Crash Prevention
(English version of above)</a> from <a href="http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/49">Linux Magazine Dec 2004</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> articles about SMART:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring%2C_Analysis_and_Reporting_Technology">English</a>,
<a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring%2C_Analysis_and_Reporting_Technology">Deutsch</a>,
<a href="http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART">Español</a>,
<a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring%2C_Analysis_and_Reporting_Technology">Français</a>,
<a href="http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring%2C_Analysis_and_Reporting_Technology">Italiano</a>,
<a href="http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring%2C_Analysis_and_Reporting_Technology">Japanese</a>,
<a href="http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.">Nederlands</a>,
<a href="http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T._%28informatyka%29">Polski</a>,
<a href="http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%8F_SMART">Russian</a>,
<a href="http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T">Slovenčina</a>
</li>
<li>The <a href="http://www.t13.org/project/d1321r3-ATA-ATAPI-5.pdf"> ATAPI/ATA-5
Revision 3 specification</a> (start with Section 8.41)</li>
<li>The <a href="http://www.t13.org/docs2002/d1410r3b.pdf"> ATAPI/ATA-6
Revision 3b specification</a></li>
<li>The ATAPI/ATA-7 specification (Draft 4b)
<a href="http://www.t13.org/docs2004/d1532v1r4b-ATA-ATAPI-7.pdf">Volume 1 (has SMART documentation)</a>,
<a href="http://www.t13.org/docs2004/d1532v2r4b-ATA-ATAPI-7.pdf">Volume 2</a>,
<a href="http://www.t13.org/docs2004/d1532v3r4b-ATA-ATAPI-7.pdf">Volume 3</a></li>
<li>The <a href="http://www.t13.org/docs2005/D1699r1f-ATA8-ACS.pdf">ATAPI/ATA-8 Command Set
specification (Draft 1f)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.t13.org/#FTP_site">Other revisions
of the ATAPI/ATA Specs</a></li>
<li>SCSI References:
<ul>
<li>The <a href="http://www.t10.org">homepage of the T10 project</a>.</li>
<li>The <a href="ftp://ftp.t10.org/t10/drafts/s2/">SCSI-2 draft</a> by the T10 project.</li>
<li>See also other subdirectories <a href="ftp://ftp.t10.org/t10/drafts/">here</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
The original SMART specification is SFF-8035i from the <a href="http://www.sffcommittee.com/ns/">
Small Form Factors (SFF) Committee</a>. 
<ul>
<li>
Here is the SFF <a href="ftp://ftp.seagate.com/sff/INF-8035.TXT"> "link"</a>
(they have "expired" the document).
</li>
<li> Version 1.0 of <a href="ftp://ftp3.ds.pg.gda.pl/people/macro/S.M.A.R.T./SFF-8035i.pdf">
SFF-8035i "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.)". </a>
</li>
<li>
Revision 2.0 of <a href="ftp://ftp3.ds.pg.gda.pl/people/macro/S.M.A.R.T./8035R2_0.PDF">
SFF-8035i "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.)". </a>
</li>
<li>
Revision 1.4 of <a href="ftp://ftp3.ds.pg.gda.pl/people/macro/S.M.A.R.T./8055.PDF">
SFF-8055i "S.M.A.R.T. Applications Guide for the ATA and SCSI Interfaces" </a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>From the <a href="http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/smart/">UCSD SMART Project</a>:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/smart/tech_papr/HamerlySmartPaper.pdf">Bayesian
Approaches to Failure Prediction for Disk Drives</a></li>
<li><a href="http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/smart/tech_papr/SmtPapTransReliFinalWeb.pdf">Improved
Disk-Drive Failure Warnings</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>From the Seagate Corporation:
<ul>
<!-- <li><a href="http://www.seagate.com/newsinfo/docs/disc/drive_reliability.pdf" target="_blank">
Estimating Drive Reliability in Desktop Computers and Consumer Electronics Systems</a></li> -->
<li><a href="http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/enhanced_smart.pdf" target="_blank">Enhanced SMART - Get SMART For Reliability</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/smart_u8.pdf" target="_blank">Playing it SMART</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/Enhanced_DST_Tech_Paper.pdf" target="_blank">Enhanced Drive Self-Test</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><u>Specifying Reliability in the Disk Drive Industry: No More
MTBF's</u>, Jon G. Elerath (IBM Storage Systems Division) in
<i>Proceedings of the IEEE 2000 Annual Reliability and Maintainability
Symposium, pg 194, 0-7803-5848-1/00/$10.00.</i></li>
<li><a href="http://smartlinux.sourceforge.net/smart/">Zbigniew Chlondowski's SMART Information Site.</a>
This includes a useful list of <a href="http://smartlinux.sourceforge.net/smart/attributes.php">Attributes
and their meanings.</a>
</li>
</ul>
<hr size="2" /><a name="sampleoutput"></a><b>Example output
from smartmontools smartctl utility:</b>
<ul>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-0.txt">MAXTOR 4K080H4</a> 80 GB 5400 RPM</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-1.txt">MAXTOR 4K080H4</a> 80 GB 5400 RPM (has failing SMART status - reallocated sector count)</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-2.txt">MAXTOR 4K080H4</a> 80 GB 5400 RPM (has had failing SMART test in the past. Look at the Seek Error Rate)</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-7.txt">MAXTOR 4K080H4</a> 80 GB 5400 RPM (has failing SMART status, some failed self-tests)</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-8.txt">MAXTOR 4K080H4</a> 80 GB 5400 RPM (has failing SMART status - calibration retry count)</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-9.txt">MAXTOR 4K080H4</a> 80 GB 5400 RPM (has failing SMART status - calibration retry count)</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-10.txt">MAXTOR 4K080H4</a> 80 GB 5400 RPM (failing self-tests. Note Current_Pending_Sector raw value and Uncorrectable (UNC) read errors)</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-3.txt">MAXTOR 6L080J4</a> 80 GB 7200 RPM</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-4.txt">MAXTOR 6L080J4</a> 80 GB 7200 RPM</li>
<li><a href="examples/Maxtor-5.txt">Maxtor 98196H8</a> 80 GB 5400 RPM</li>
<li><a href="examples/MAXTOR-6.txt">Maxtor 4R080J0</a> Note: Attribute 9 (lifetime) stored in minutes!</li>
<li><a href="examples/IC35L120AVVA07-0-0.txt">IBM IC35L120AVVA07 (GXP 120 series)</a> 120 GB 7200 RPM (note 3 temperatures)</li>
<li><a href="examples/IC35L120AVVA07-0-1.txt">IBM IC35L120AVVA07 (GXP 120 series)</a> 120 GB 7200 RPM (note 3 temperatures)</li>
<li><a href="examples/IC35L120AVV207-0.txt">IBM IC35L120AVV207 (GXP 180 series)</a> 120 GB 7200 RPM (note 3 temperatures)</li>
<li><a href="examples/IC35L120AVV207-1.txt">IBM IC35L120AVV207 (GXP 180 series)</a> (failing SMART status and self-tests)</li>
<li><a href="examples/HITACHI_DK23BA-20-0.txt">HITACHI_DK23BA-20</a> Hitachi 20 GB Laptop Disk</li>
<li><a href="examples/HITACHI_DK23AA-12B.txt">HITACHI_DK23AA-12B</a> Really sick failing Hitachi Laptop Disk</li>
<li><a href="examples/TOSHIBA-0.txt">TOSHIBA MK2018GAS</a> Toshiba 20 GB Laptop Disk</li>
<li><a href="examples/TOSHIBA-MK6021GAS.txt">TOSHIBA MK6021GAS</a> Toshiba 60 GB Laptop Disk (note 3 temperatures)</li>
<li><a href="examples/FUJITSU1.txt">Fujitsu MHR2040AT</a> Fujitsu Laptop Disk (has failing SMART status - write error count)</li>
<li><a href="examples/FUJITSU_MHR2020AT.txt">Fujitsu MHR2020AT</a> Fujitsu Laptop Disk (has failing SMART status and self-tests)</li>
<li><a href="examples/WD2500JB.txt">Western Digital WD2500JB</a> Western Digital Disk (failing SMART status and self-tests)</li>
<li><a href="examples/WD800JD.txt">Western Digital WD800JD</a> Western Digital Disk (failing SMART status - too may reallocated sectors, and self-tests)</li>
</ul>
<hr size="2" />
Maintained by: <a href="mailto:smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net">Bruce Allen</a><br />
Copyright (C) 2002-5 Bruce Allen<br />
Last updated: <tt>$Date: 2006/11/04 20:04:26 $</tt><br />
CVS tag: <tt>$Id: index.html,v 1.208 2006/11/04 20:04:26 chrfranke Exp $</tt>
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