S.M.A.R.T.

SMART Testing

smartctl

USB Hard Drives

• Add -d sat

Seagate USB Hard Drives

For Seagate USB hard drives, it will run in uas mode and smart won't work.
See https://askubuntu.com/questions/637450/cannot-perform-smart-data-and-self-test-on-external-hard-drive.
To fix this:

1. Run lsusb to find the id of your HDD
   • It should start with 0bc2.
2. Create file /etc/modprobe.d/ignore_uas.conf and add this following:
   • options usb-storage quirks=[ids]
   • E.g. options usb-storage quirks=0bc2:ab31:,0bc2:a0a4:
3. Run sudo update-initramfs -u
4. Reboot

Long Smart Tests

When running long smart tests, you will want to continuously poll the device so it does not go to sleep.

DEVICE=/dev/sda
sudo smartctl -t long $DEVICE
sudo watch -d --cumulative -n 10 smartctl -a $DEVICE

Remote monitoring

See Reference

1. Install the following:

   sudo apt install mailutils msmtp msmtp-mta smartmontools

2. Edit /etc/smartd.conf
3. Add some options

See smartd.conf reference

Example:

/dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_easystore_264D_394B47573334314C-0:0 -s (S/../../6/01) -a -m [email protected] -M test -M daily

• -a turns on some defaults for checking smart attributes
• -M Test sends a test email when smartd starts
• -M daily sends daily reminders for failures
• -s (S/../../6/01) runs a short test every saturday at 1AM.

Tests

sudo smartctl -t <short|long|conveyance|select> <drive>

• conveyance is good to test after any physical movement of the drive.

gsmartcontrol

gsmartcontrol is a GUI frontend for smartctl