smartmontools
Reads the SMART health data built into disks and runs self-tests, giving advance warning before a drive fails.
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Other download sites
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Package managers
- Chocolatey
choco install smartmontools - Homebrew
brew install smartmontools
About smartmontools
Every modern ATA, SATA, SCSI, SAS and NVMe disk records its own health statistics through SMART: reallocated sectors, pending sectors, error counts, temperature, power-on hours. smartmontools is the standard way to read them. `smartctl` queries a drive and runs short or long self-tests on demand; `smartd` runs as a daemon, checks drives on a schedule and emails you when something changes.
In many cases this gives real advance warning of degradation and failure, which is the difference between replacing a disk and restoring a backup. It runs on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, Solaris, Windows, Cygwin, OS/2 and QNX, and appears on most rescue live CDs.
Strengths
- Often gives advance warning of disk degradation before data is lost
- smartd monitors on a schedule and notifies you, rather than waiting to be asked
- Supports ATA, SATA, SCSI, SAS and NVMe disks plus SCSI and SAS tape drives
- Runs on essentially every operating system and ships on rescue live media
Limitations
- Command-line only; interpreting the attribute values takes some learning
- Attribute meanings vary by manufacturer and are not always documented
- SMART does not predict every failure; drives still die without warning
- USB enclosures often block SMART commands from reaching the drive
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source under the GNU GPL version 2.
- License
- GPL-2.0
- Developer
- smartmontools Team
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Checking whether a disk is healthy, and being told before one fails
- Categories
- Disk tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Selected from the TechWalrus downloads catalog (Disk & USB); facts checked against the developer's own pages, 2 sources on file.
Alternatives to smartmontools
Compare allSoftware that can replace smartmontools for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
CrystalDiskInfo
Reads the health data your drives already record and tells you plainly whether one is dying.
CrystalDiskInfo is a Windows-only graphical tool that gives a plain Good, Caution or Bad verdict with tray alerts, instead of a cross-platform command-line interface.
GNOME Disks
A graphical disk utility for GNOME that partitions, formats, benchmarks and images drives on Linux.
GNOME Disks shows SMART data in a graphical Linux utility alongside partitioning and benchmarks, without scheduled monitoring like smartd.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
CrystalDiskMark
The standard Windows disk benchmark, measuring sequential and random read and write speeds in a few clicks.
GNU ddrescue
A command-line data recovery tool that copies raw blocks from failing disks while working around read errors.
AS SSD Benchmark
Quick Windows benchmark tool for testing SSD read and write speeds.
TestDisk & PhotoRec
Recovers lost partitions, makes non-booting disks bootable again, and undeletes files from FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext filesystems.
Hiren's BootCD PE
Bootable Windows PE rescue environment full of diagnostic and repair tools.
