How can I check the SMART status of a SSD or HDD on current versions of Ubuntu 14.04 through 17.10?

Question

How can I check the SMART status of a drive under 14.04 and beyond? I've seen Checking HD SMART status on a fresh install but it doesn't seem to apply under 14.04 and later.

Answer 1

Disks Utility

Launch the Disks Utility (If you don't have it already, you can install Disks via the Software Center or open a terminal and issue the command sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility.

Select the drive of interest then click on the gear (menu button since 15.04) at the upper right corner and choose SMART Data & self tests

Types of self-tests

• Short: Checks the electrical and mechanical performance as well as the read performance of the disk. Electrical tests might include a test of buffer RAM, a read/write circuitry test, or a test of the read/write head elements. Mechanical test includes seeking and servo on data tracks. Scans small parts of the drive's surface (area is vendor-specific and there is a time limit on the test). Checks the list of pending sectors that may have read errors, and it usually takes under two minutes.
• Long/extended: A longer and more thorough version of the short self-test, scanning the entire disk surface with no time limit. This test usually takes several hours, depending on the read/write speed of the drive and its size.
• Conveyance: Intended as a quick test to identify damage incurred during transporting of the device from the drive manufacturer to the computer manufacturer. Only available on ATA drives, and it usually takes several minutes.

How to interpret SMART-Attributes

The most important attribute in terms of failure rates is likely the 196 - Reallocated Sector Count, but considering Google research paper: _"...failure prediction models based on SMART parameters alone are likely to be severely limited in their prediction accuracy, given that a large fraction of our failed drives have shown no SMART error signals whatsoever." However, the majority of the drives (over 60%) in the study that failed did exhibit a smart failure, so as imperfect as it may be, it's still valid indicator.

Answer 2

For a commandline version, you need to install the smartmontools package.

Do this by running:

sudo apt-get install smartmontools

You will then be able to get information on SMART by running sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda in the terminal.

Note that smartctl tends to be overly verbose. As such, it's usually a good idea to write the results to a file, like such:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda > smart-results.txt

Alternatively, if you'd rather not save it to a file, you can pipe the results through more.

Postfix is installed by default with smartmontools. To not install it, add --no-install-recommends to the apt command above.

Answer 3

Ubuntu 16.04

This answer is migrated from a duplicate question closed here (What happend to SMART data (disk selftest option)).

The question above has been changed to require Ubuntu versions after 14.04 but the answers haven't changed and don't apply to Ubuntu 16.04. As such it caused confusion as described in the closed question.

Select Dash the first option on the Launcher and type disks. Select the icon that appears. If the disks program isn't available you need to install it first with:

sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility

The disks main screen looks like this:

Notice the "hamburger" menu in the top right corner. Select it to get a drop down menu where you can select the SMART screen shown below:

If you require further explanation please comment below.