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Page 1 of 3 Introduction Aim of this howto is to exploit SMART technology (nowadays every hard disk has got it) to check if it is ok or not. SMART-enabled hard disks are able to continuously monitor their own health and alert the user if any anomaly is detected, and most of them are also able to carry out specific tests for better analysis. Warning: An important thing before going on: always backup your important data, regardless of what SMART says! Even though SMART is very reliable, sometimes it may be wrong; also, hard disks often die in an unexpected way and even if SMART has told you something was wrong you may not have enough time to put your data in a safe place. Installation Procedure First of all make sure SMART is enabled in the BIOS. For example, in my BIOS I have this: Some BIOSes don't have the option, and report S.M.A.R.T. as disabled, but don't worry, smartctl can enable it (see below). Carefully read the SMART instructions for your motherboard. Sometimes this option maybe intentionally hidden, as shown in this example. Now let's install the smartmontools package: # emerge -av smartmontools
Finally, you have to check if your hard disk(s) support SMART: # smartctl -i /dev/hda
For SATA drives: # smartctl -i -d ata /dev/sda
To enable SMART on IDE drives: # smartctl -s on /dev/hda
To enable SMART on SATA drives: # smartctl -s on -d ata /dev/sda
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Informatique 
