

smartctl : is the command line program that allows us to verify hard drives and SSDs on demand, or we can program its operation through the typical cron in the operating system.

#View ssd health install#
Sometimes this package is pre-installed in our distribution, and other times we have to install it ourselves. In most Linux based distributions we have a package called smartmontools. In Linux operating systems we have the possibility of carrying out SMART tests to check if the disk is working correctly, in addition, we have the possibility of programming these tests to minimize the impact on performance. Internally SMART has a range of values that we can consider “normal”, and when a parameter goes out of these values, that is when the alarm goes off, the BIOS/UEFI will detect it and notify the operating system that there is a failure in the system. This technology is responsible for monitoring different parameters of the hard disk, such as the speed of the disk platters, bad sectors, calibration errors, cyclic redundancy check (the typical CRC errors), disk temperature, data reading speed, time starting (spin-up), reallocated sectors counter, search speed (seek time) and other very advanced parameters that allow you to know what is important: if the hard drive is going to fail soon. Today all servers, operating systems and disks use this technology to detect problems in the hard disk, we could say that it is “universal” and that it is always used. In order to use SMART, it is absolutely necessary that the BIOS or UEFI of the server is compatible with this technology and that it is activated, in addition, it is also absolutely necessary that the disks incorporate it. If we ignore the SMART, there will come a time when the hard drive will break and we will lose data, so it is essential to always pay attention to the SMART data of the disks. The goal of SMART is to alert users so they can back up and replace the drive without having any data loss. This technology incorporated in the firmware of hard drives and SSDs consists of detecting possible failures in the hard drive, with the aim of anticipating physical errors in the hard drive or unexpected failures in SSD drives due to writing to internal flash memory. Status of disks in QNAP NAS What is the SMART of the discsĪll hard drives and SSD drives have a technology called SMART, or also known as SMART which stands for “Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology”.
