ide-smart
performs and queries the results of various non destructive
tests on a SMART capable IDE DEVICE. You must have a BIOS and
hardware that supports it.
SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology,
which provides near future failure prediction monitoring different attributes
(listed as Id) of the device. If a value of a particular
Id (or attribute) is under a certain threshold, the device most
probabily will be about to fail.
There are two type of tests: online and offline. Online tests are
periodically performed by the drive while it's being used, while offline
tests can be performed only by manually starting an offline test.
Each test also has a severity associated with it: Advisory and
PreFailure. Advisory indicates a possible failure, and PreFailure a
Predictable Failure which is an "sure" failure in the near future. Predictable
failures ar characterized by a degradation of an attribute over time mostly
corresponding to mechanic causes (for example head flying height degradation
would indicate an impending head crash).
The exact meaning of the attributes varies between manufacturers and even
models, so it is impossible to decypher them (ranging through spin-up time
to head flying height or throughput performance). At any rate, the value
you should care upon is the last column, holding whether a test passed
or failed.
OPTIONS
-d DEVICE, --device=DEVICE
Select the DEVICE on to which perform the tests or query.
-i, --immediate
Perform offline tests immediately. Any access to the device will
temporarily suspend offline tests.
-q, --quiet-check
Outputs no messages. Returns a negative value indicating how many tests
failed, 0 if all went ok, or a positive value if there was some error which
wasn't a test failure.
-1, --auto-on
Starts offline tests (if any) on the device; wait about 30 minutes and run
ide-smart again for results (time depends on the hard drive). Any
access to the device will temporarily suspend offline tests.
-0, --auto-off
Ends offline test (if any) on the device.
GNU STANDARD OPTIONS
--help
Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.
--version
Print version information on standard output, then exit successfully.