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SMARTCTL(8) 2010-10-16 SMARTCTL(8)
NAME
smartctl - Control and Monitor Utility for SMART Disks
SYNOPSIS
smartctl [options] device
FULL PATH
/usr/sbin/smartctl
PACKAGE VERSION
smartmontools-5.40 2010-10-16 r3189
DESCRIPTION
smartctl controls the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) system built into many ATA-3 and later
ATA, IDE and SCSI-3 hard drives. The purpose of SMART is to monitor the reliability of the hard drive and predict drive
failures, and to carry out different types of drive self-tests. This version of smartctl is compatible with ATA/ATAPI-7
and earlier standards (see REFERENCES below)
smartctl is a command line utility designed to perform SMART tasks such as printing the SMART self-test and error logs,
enabling and disabling SMART automatic testing, and initiating device self-tests. Note: if the user issues a SMART com-
mand that is (apparently) not implemented by the device, smartctl will print a warning message but issue the command any-
way (see the -T, --tolerance option below). This should not cause problems: on most devices, unimplemented SMART com-
mands issued to a drive are ignored and/or return an error.
smartctl also provides support for polling TapeAlert messages from SCSI tape drives and changers.
The user must specify the device to be controlled or interrogated as the final argument to smartctl. The command set used
by the device is often derived from the device path but may need help with the '-d' option (for more information see the
section on "ATA, SCSI command sets and SAT" below). Device paths are as follows:
LINUX: Use the forms "/dev/hd[a-t]" for IDE/ATA devices, and "/dev/sd[a-z]" for SCSI devices. For SCSI Tape Drives and
Changers with TapeAlert support use the devices "/dev/nst*" and "/dev/sg*". For SATA disks accessed with
libata, use "/dev/sd[a-z]" and append "-d ata". For disks behind 3ware controllers you may need "/dev/sd[a-z]"
or "/dev/twe[0-9]", "/dev/twa[0-9]" or "/dev/twl[0-9]": see details below. For disks behind HighPoint RocketRAID
controllers you may need "/dev/sd[a-z]". For disks behind Areca SATA RAID controllers, you need "/dev/sg[2-9]"
(note that smartmontools interacts with the Areca controllers via a SCSI generic device which is different than
the SCSI device used for reading and writing data)!
DARWIN: Use the forms /dev/disk[0-9] or equivalently disk[0-9] or equivalently /dev/rdisk[0-9]. Long forms are also
available: please use '-h' to see some examples. Note that there is currently no Darwin SCSI support.
FREEBSD: Use the forms "/dev/ad[0-9]+" for IDE/ATA devices and "/dev/da[0-9]+" or "/dev/pass[0-9]+" for SCSI devices.
For SATA devices on AHCI bus use "/dev/ada[0-9]+" format.
NETBSD/OPENBSD:
Use the form "/dev/wd[0-9]+c" for IDE/ATA devices. For SCSI disk and tape devices, use the device names
"/dev/sd[0-9]+c" and "/dev/st[0-9]+c" respectively. Be sure to specify the correct "whole disk" partition let-
ter for your architecture.
SOLARIS: Use the forms "/dev/rdsk/c?t?d?s?" for IDE/ATA and SCSI disk devices, and "/dev/rmt/*" for SCSI tape devices.
WINDOWS 9x/ME:
Use the forms "/dev/hd[a-d]" for standard IDE/ATA devices accessed via SMARTVSD.VXD, and "/dev/hd[e-h]" for
additional devices accessed via a patched SMARTVSE.VXD (see INSTALL file for details). Use the form
"/dev/scsi[0-9][0-f]" for SCSI devices via an aspi dll on ASPI adapter 0-9, ID 0-15. The prefix "/dev/" is
optional.
WINDOWS NT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista:
Use the forms "/dev/sd[a-z]" for IDE/(S)ATA and SCSI disks "\\.\PhysicalDrive[0-25]" (where "a" maps to "0").
These disks can also be referred to as "/dev/pd[0-255]" for "\\.\PhysicalDrive[0-255]". ATA disks can also be
referred to as "/dev/hd[a-z]" for "\\.\PhysicalDrive[0-25]". Use one the forms "/dev/tape[0-255]",
"/dev/st[0-255]", or "/dev/nst[0-255]" for SCSI tape drives "\\.\Tape[0-255]".
Alternatively, drive letters "X:" or "X:\" may be used to specify the ('basic') disk behind a mounted partition.
This does not work with 'dynamic' disks.
For disks behind 3ware 9000 controllers use "/dev/sd[a-z],N" where N specifies the disk number (3ware 'port')
behind the controller providing the logical drive ('unit') specified by "/dev/sd[a-z]". Alternatively, use
"/dev/tw_cli/cx/py" for controller x, port y to run the 'tw_cli' tool and parse the output. This provides lim-
ited monitoring ('-i', '-c', '-A' below) if SMART support is missing in the driver. Use "/dev/tw_cli/stdin" or
"/dev/tw_cli/clip" to parse CLI or 3DM output from standard input or clipboard. The option '-d 3ware,N' is not
necessary on Windows. The prefix "/dev/" is optional.
CYGWIN: See "WINDOWS NT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista" above.
OS/2,eComStation:
Use the form "/dev/hd[a-z]" for IDE/ATA devices.
if '-' is specified as the device path, smartctl reads and interprets it's own debug output from standard input. See '-r
ataioctl' below for details.
Based on the device path, smartctl will guess the device type (ATA or SCSI). If necessary, the '-d' option can be used
to over-ride this guess
Note that the printed output of smartctl displays most numerical values in base 10 (decimal), but some values are dis-
played in base 16 (hexadecimal). To distinguish them, the base 16 values are always displayed with a leading "0x", for
example: "0xff". This man page follows the same convention.
OPTIONS
The options are grouped below into several categories. smartctl will execute the corresponding commands in the order:
INFORMATION, ENABLE/DISABLE, DISPLAY DATA, RUN/ABORT TESTS.
SHOW INFORMATION OPTIONS:
-h, --help, --usage
Prints a usage message to STDOUT and exits.
-V, --version, --copyright, --license
Prints version, copyright, license, home page and SVN revision information for your copy of smartctl to STDOUT and
then exits. Please include this information if you are reporting bugs or problems.
-i, --info
Prints the device model number, serial number, firmware version, and ATA Standard version/revision information.
Says if the device supports SMART, and if so, whether SMART support is currently enabled or disabled. If the
device supports Logical Block Address mode (LBA mode) print current user drive capacity in bytes. (If drive is has
a user protected area reserved, or is "clipped", this may be smaller than the potential maximum drive capacity.)
Indicates if the drive is in the smartmontools database (see '-v' options below). If so, the drive model family
may also be printed. If '-n' (see below) is specified, the power mode of the drive is printed.
-a, --all
Prints all SMART information about the disk, or TapeAlert information about the tape drive or changer. For ATA
devices this is equivalent to
'-H -i -c -A -l error -l selftest -l selective'
and for SCSI, this is equivalent to
'-H -i -A -l error -l selftest'.
Note that for ATA disks this does not enable the non-SMART options and the SMART options which require support for
48-bit ATA commands.
-x, --xall
Prints all SMART and non-SMART information about the device. For ATA devices this is equivalent to
'-H -i -c -A -l xerror,error -l xselftest,selftest -l selective
-l directory -l scttemp -l scterc -l sataphy'.
and for SCSI, this is equivalent to
'-H -i -A -l error -l selftest -l background -l sasphy'.
--scan Scans for devices and prints each device name, device type and protocol ([ATA] or [SCSI]) info. May be used in
conjunction with '-d TYPE' to restrict the scan to a specific TYPE. See also info about platform specific device
scan and the DEVICESCAN directive on smartd(8) man page.
--scan-open
Same as --scan, but also tries to open each device before printing device info. The device open may change the
device type due to autodetection (see also '-d test').
RUN-TIME BEHAVIOR OPTIONS:
-q TYPE, --quietmode=TYPE
Specifies that smartctl should run in one of the two quiet modes described here. The valid arguments to this
option are:
errorsonly - only print: For the '-l error' option, if nonzero, the number of errors recorded in the SMART error
log and the power-on time when they occurred; For the '-l selftest' option, errors recorded in the device
self-test log; For the '-H' option, SMART "disk failing" status or device Attributes (pre-failure or usage) which
failed either now or in the past; For the '-A' option, device Attributes (pre-failure or usage) which failed
either now or in the past.
silent - print no output. The only way to learn about what was found is to use the exit status of smartctl (see
RETURN VALUES below).
noserial - Do not print the serial number of the device.
-d TYPE, --device=TYPE
Specifies the type of the device. The valid arguments to this option are ata, scsi, sat, marvell, 3ware,N,
areca,N, usbcypress, usbjmicron, usbsunplus, cciss,N, hpt,L/M (or hpt,L/M/N), and test.
If this option is not used or 'auto' is used then smartctl will attempt to guess the device type from the device
name or from controller type info provided by the operating system.
If 'test' is used as the TYPE name, smartctl prints the guessed TYPE name, then opens the device and prints the
(possibly changed) TYPE name and then exists without performing any further commands.
The 'sat' device type is for ATA disks that have a SCSI to ATA Translation (SAT) Layer (SATL) between the disk and
the operating system. SAT defines two ATA PASS THROUGH SCSI commands, one 12 bytes long and the other 16 bytes
long that smartctl will utilize when this device type is selected. The default is the 16 byte variant which can be
overridden with either '-d sat,12' or '-d sat,16'.
The 'usbcypress' device type is for ATA disks that are behind a Cypress usb-pata bridge. This will use the ATACB
proprietary scsi pass through command. There is no autodetection at the moment. The best way to know if your
device support it, is to check your device usb id (most Cypress usb ata bridge got vid=0x04b4, pid=0x6830) or to
try it (if the usb device doesn't support ATACB, smartmontools print an error). The default scsi operation code
is 0x24, but although it can be overridden with '-d usbcypress,0xn', where n is the scsi operation code, you're
running the risk of damage to the device or filesystems on it.
[NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] The 'usbjmicron' device type is for SATA disks that are behind a JMicron USB
to PATA/SATA bridge. The 48-bit ATA commands (required e.g. for '-l xerror', see below) do not work with all of
these bridges and are therefore disabled by default. These commands can be enabled by '-d usbjmicron,x'. If two
disks are connected to a bridge with two ports, an error message is printed if no PORT is specified. The port can
be specified by '-d usbjmicron[,x],PORT' where PORT is 0 (master) or 1 (slave). This is not necessary if the
device uses a port multiplier to connect multiple disks to one port. The disks appear under separate /dev/ice
names then. CAUTION: Specifying ',x' for a device which does not support it results in I/O errors and may discon-
nect the drive. The same applies if the specified PORT does not exist or is not connected to a disk.
[NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] The 'usbsunplus' device type is for SATA disks that are behind a SunplusIT USB
to SATA bridge.
Under Linux, to look at SATA disks behind Marvell SATA controllers (using Marvell's 'linuxIAL' driver rather than
libata driver) use '-d marvell'. Such controllers show up as Marvell Technology Group Ltd. SATA I or II con-
trollers using lspci, or using lspci -n show a vendor ID 0x11ab and a device ID of either 0x5040, 0x5041, 0x5080,
0x5081, 0x6041 or 0x6081. The 'linuxIAL' driver seems not (yet?) available in the Linux kernel source tree, but
should be available from system vendors (ftp://ftp.aslab.com/ is known to provide a patch with the driver).
Under Linux , to look at SCSI/SAS disks behind LSI MegaRAID controllers, use syntax such as:
smartctl -a -d megaraid,2 /dev/sda
smartctl -a -d megaraid,0 /dev/sdb
where in the argument megaraid,N, the integer N is the physical disk number within the MegaRAID controller. This
interface will also work for Dell PERC controllers. The following /dev/XXX entry must exist:
For PERC2/3/4 controllers: /dev/megadev0
For PERC5/6 controllers: /dev/megaraid_sas_ioctl_node
Under Linux and FreeBSD, to look at ATA disks behind 3ware SCSI RAID controllers, use syntax such as:
smartctl -a -d 3ware,2 /dev/sda
smartctl -a -d 3ware,0 /dev/twe0
smartctl -a -d 3ware,1 /dev/twa0
smartctl -a -d 3ware,1 /dev/twl0
where in the argument 3ware,N, the integer N is the disk number (3ware 'port') within the 3ware ATA RAID con-
troller. The allowed values of N are from 0 to 127 inclusive. The first two forms, which refer to devices
/dev/sda-z and /dev/twe0-15, may be used with 3ware series 6000, 7000, and 8000 series controllers that use the
3x-xxxx driver. Note that the /dev/sda-z form is deprecated starting with the Linux 2.6 kernel series and may not
be supported by the Linux kernel in the near future. The final form, which refers to devices /dev/twa0-15, must be
used with 3ware 9000 series controllers, which use the 3w-9xxx driver.
The devices /dev/twl0-15 must be used with the 3ware/LSI 9750 series controllers which use the 3w-sas driver.
Note that if the special character device nodes /dev/twl?, /dev/twa? and /dev/twe? do not exist, or exist with
the incorrect major or minor numbers, smartctl will recreate them on the fly. Typically /dev/twa0 refers to the
first 9000-series controller, /dev/twa1 refers to the second 9000 series controller, and so on. The /dev/twl0
devices refers to the first 9750 series controller, /dev/twl1 resfers to the second 9750 series controller, and so
on. Likewise /dev/twe0 refers to the first 6/7/8000-series controller, /dev/twe1 refers to the second 6/7/8000
series controller, and so on.
Note that for the 6/7/8000 controllers, any of the physical disks can be queried or examined using any of the
3ware's SCSI logical device /dev/sd? entries. Thus, if logical device /dev/sda is made up of two physical disks
(3ware ports zero and one) and logical device /dev/sdb is made up of two other physical disks (3ware ports two and
three) then you can examine the SMART data on any of the four physical disks using either SCSI device /dev/sda or
/dev/sdb. If you need to know which logical SCSI device a particular physical disk (3ware port) is associated
with, use the dmesg or SYSLOG output to show which SCSI ID corresponds to a particular 3ware unit, and then use
the 3ware CLI or 3dm tool to determine which ports (physical disks) correspond to particular 3ware units.
If the value of N corresponds to a port that does not exist on the 3ware controller, or to a port that does not
physically have a disk attached to it, the behavior of smartctl depends upon the specific controller model,
firmware, Linux kernel and platform. In some cases you will get a warning message that the device does not exist.
In other cases you will be presented with 'void' data for a non-existent device.
Note that if the /dev/sd? addressing form is used, then older 3w-xxxx drivers do not pass the "Enable Autosave"
('-S on') and "Enable Automatic Offline" ('-o on') commands to the disk, and produce these types of harmless sys-
log error messages instead: "3w-xxxx: tw_ioctl(): Passthru size (123392) too big". This can be fixed by upgrading
to version 1.02.00.037 or later of the 3w-xxxx driver, or by applying a patch to older versions. See http://smart-
montools.sourceforge.net/ for instructions. Alternatively, use the character device /dev/twe0-15 interface.
The selective self-test functions ('-t select,A-B') are only supported using the character device interface
/dev/twl0-15, /dev/twa0-15 and /dev/twe0-15. The necessary WRITE LOG commands can not be passed through the SCSI
interface.
Areca SATA RAID controllers are currently supported under Linux only. To look at SATA disks behind Areca RAID
controllers, use syntax such as:
smartctl -a -d areca,2 /dev/sg2
smartctl -a -d areca,3 /dev/sg3
where in the argument areca,N, the integer N is the disk number (Areca 'port') within the Areca SATA RAID con-
troller. The allowed values of N are from 1 to 24 inclusive. The first line above addresses the second disk on
the first Areca RAID controller. The second line addresses the third disk on the second Areca RAID controller.
To help identify the correct device, use the command:
cat /proc/scsi/sg/device_hdr /proc/scsi/sg/devices
to show the SCSI generic devices (one per line, starting with /dev/sg0). The correct SCSI generic devices to
address for smartmontools are the ones with the type field equal to 3. If the incorrect device is addressed,
please read the warning/error messages carefully. They should provide hints about what devices to use.
Important: the Areca controller must have firmware version 1.46 or later. Lower-numbered firmware versions will
give (harmless) SCSI error messages and no SMART information.
To look at (S)ATA disks behind HighPoint RocketRAID controllers, use syntax such as:
smartctl -a -d hpt,1/3 /dev/sda (under Linux)
smartctl -a -d hpt,1/2/3 /dev/sda (under Linux)
smartctl -a -d hpt,1/3 /dev/hptrr (under FreeBSD)
smartctl -a -d hpt,1/2/3 /dev/hptrr (under FreeBSD)
where in the argument hpt,L/M or hpt,L/M/N, the integer L is the controller id, the integer M is the channel num-
ber, and the integer N is the PMPort number if it is available. The allowed values of L are from 1 to 4 inclusive,
M are from 1 to 8 inclusive and N from 1 to 5 if PMPort available. Note that the /dev/sda-z form should be the
device node which stands for the disks derived from the HighPoint RocketRAID controllers under Linux and under
FreeBSD, it is the character device which the driver registered (eg, /dev/hptrr, /dev/hptmv6). And also these
values are limited by the model of the HighPoint RocketRAID controller.
HighPoint RocketRAID controllers are currently ONLY supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
cciss controllers are currently ONLY supported under Linux and FreeBSD.
-T TYPE, --tolerance=TYPE
[ATA only] Specifies how tolerant smartctl should be of ATA and SMART command failures.
The behavior of smartctl depends upon whether the command is "optional" or "mandatory". Here "mandatory" means
"required by the ATA/ATAPI-5 Specification if the device implements the SMART command set" and "optional" means
"not required by the ATA/ATAPI-5 Specification even if the device implements the SMART command set." The "manda-
tory" ATA and SMART commands are: (1) ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE, (2) SMART ENABLE/DISABLE ATTRIBUTE AUTOSAVE, (3) SMART
ENABLE/DISABLE, and (4) SMART RETURN STATUS.
The valid arguments to this option are:
normal - exit on failure of any mandatory SMART command, and ignore all failures of optional SMART commands. This
is the default. Note that on some devices, issuing unimplemented optional SMART commands doesn't cause an error.
This can result in misleading smartctl messages such as "Feature X not implemented", followed shortly by "Feature
X: enabled". In most such cases, contrary to the final message, Feature X is not enabled.
conservative - exit on failure of any optional SMART command.
permissive - ignore failure(s) of mandatory SMART commands. This option may be given more than once. Each addi-
tional use of this option will cause one more additional failure to be ignored. Note that the use of this option
can lead to messages like "Feature X not implemented", followed shortly by "Error: unable to enable Feature X".
In a few such cases, contrary to the final message, Feature X is enabled.
verypermissive - equivalent to giving a large number of '-T permissive' options: ignore failures of any number of
mandatory SMART commands. Please see the note above.
-b TYPE, --badsum=TYPE
[ATA only] Specifies the action smartctl should take if a checksum error is detected in the: (1) Device Identity
Structure, (2) SMART Self-Test Log Structure, (3) SMART Attribute Value Structure, (4) SMART Attribute Threshold
Structure, or (5) ATA Error Log Structure.
The valid arguments to this option are:
warn - report the incorrect checksum but carry on in spite of it. This is the default.
exit - exit smartctl.
ignore - continue silently without issuing a warning.
-r TYPE, --report=TYPE
Intended primarily to help smartmontools developers understand the behavior of smartmontools on non-conforming or
poorly conforming hardware. This option reports details of smartctl transactions with the device. The option can
be used multiple times. When used just once, it shows a record of the ioctl() transactions with the device. When
used more than once, the detail of these ioctl() transactions are reported in greater detail. The valid arguments
to this option are:
ioctl - report all ioctl() transactions.
ataioctl - report only ioctl() transactions with ATA devices.
scsiioctl - report only ioctl() transactions with SCSI devices. Invoking this once shows the SCSI commands in hex
and the corresponding status. Invoking it a second time adds a hex listing of the first 64 bytes of data send to,
or received from the device.
Any argument may include a positive integer to specify the level of detail that should be reported. The argument
should be followed by a comma then the integer with no spaces. For example, ataioctl,2 The default level is 1, so
'-r ataioctl,1' and '-r ataioctl' are equivalent.
For testing purposes, the output of '-r ataioctl,2' can later be parsed by smartctl itself if '-' is used as
device path argument. The ATA command input parameters, sector data and return values are reconstructed from the
debug report read from stdin. Then smartctl internally simulates an ATA device with the same behaviour. This is
does not work for SCSI devices yet.
-n POWERMODE, --nocheck=POWERMODE
[ATA only] Specifies if smartctl should exit before performing any checks when the device is in a low-power mode.
It may be used to prevent a disk from being spun-up by smartctl. The power mode is ignored by default. The allowed
values of POWERMODE are:
never - check the device always, but print the power mode if '-i' is specified.
sleep - check the device unless it is in SLEEP mode.
standby - check the device unless it is in SLEEP or STANDBY mode. In these modes most disks are not spinning, so
if you want to prevent a disk from spinning up, this is probably what you want.
idle - check the device unless it is in SLEEP, STANDBY or IDLE mode. In the IDLE state, most disks are still
spinning, so this is probably not what you want.
SMART FEATURE ENABLE/DISABLE COMMANDS:
Note: if multiple options are used to both enable and disable a feature, then both the enable and disable commands
will be issued. The enable command will always be issued before the corresponding disable command.
-s VALUE, --smart=VALUE
Enables or disables SMART on device. The valid arguments to this option are on and off. Note that the command
'-s on' (perhaps used with with the '-o on' and '-S on' options) should be placed in a start-up script for your
machine, for example in rc.local or rc.sysinit. In principle the SMART feature settings are preserved over
power-cycling, but it doesn't hurt to be sure. It is not necessary (or useful) to enable SMART to see the TapeAl-
ert messages.
-o VALUE, --offlineauto=VALUE
[ATA only] Enables or disables SMART automatic offline test, which scans the drive every four hours for disk
defects. This command can be given during normal system operation. The valid arguments to this option are on and
off.
Note that the SMART automatic offline test command is listed as "Obsolete" in every version of the ATA and
ATA/ATAPI Specifications. It was originally part of the SFF-8035i Revision 2.0 specification, but was never part
of any ATA specification. However it is implemented and used by many vendors. [Good documentation can be found in
IBM's Official Published Disk Specifications. For example the IBM Travelstar 40GNX Hard Disk Drive Specifications
(Revision 1.1, 22 April 2002, Publication # 1541, Document S07N-7715-02) page 164. You can also read the SFF-8035i
Specification -- see REFERENCES below.] You can tell if automatic offline testing is supported by seeing if this
command enables and disables it, as indicated by the 'Auto Offline Data Collection' part of the SMART capabilities
report (displayed with '-c').
SMART provides three basic categories of testing. The first category, called "online" testing, has no effect on
the performance of the device. It is turned on by the '-s on' option.
The second category of testing is called "offline" testing. This type of test can, in principle, degrade the
device performance. The '-o on' option causes this offline testing to be carried out, automatically, on a regular
scheduled basis. Normally, the disk will suspend offline testing while disk accesses are taking place, and then
automatically resume it when the disk would otherwise be idle, so in practice it has little effect. Note that a
one-time offline test can also be carried out immediately upon receipt of a user command. See the '-t offline'
option below, which causes a one-time offline test to be carried out immediately.
The choice (made by the SFF-8035i and ATA specification authors) of the word testing for these first two cate-
gories is unfortunate, and often leads to confusion. In fact these first two categories of online and offline
testing could have been more accurately described as online and offline data collection.
The results of this automatic or immediate offline testing (data collection) are reflected in the values of the
SMART Attributes. Thus, if problems or errors are detected, the values of these Attributes will go below their
failure thresholds; some types of errors may also appear in the SMART error log. These are visible with the '-A'
and '-l error' options respectively.
Some SMART attribute values are updated only during off-line data collection activities; the rest are updated dur-
ing normal operation of the device or during both normal operation and off-line testing. The Attribute value ta-
ble produced by the '-A' option indicates this in the UPDATED column. Attributes of the first type are labeled
"Offline" and Attributes of the second type are labeled "Always".
The third category of testing (and the only category for which the word 'testing' is really an appropriate choice)
is "self" testing. This third type of test is only performed (immediately) when a command to run it is issued.
The '-t' and '-X' options can be used to carry out and abort such self-tests; please see below for further
details.
Any errors detected in the self testing will be shown in the SMART self-test log, which can be examined using the
'-l selftest' option.
Note: in this manual page, the word "Test" is used in connection with the second category just described, e.g. for
the "offline" testing. The words "Self-test" are used in connection with the third category.
-S VALUE, --saveauto=VALUE
[ATA] Enables or disables SMART autosave of device vendor-specific Attributes. The valid arguments to this option
are on and off. Note that this feature is preserved across disk power cycles, so you should only need to issue it
once.
The ATA standard does not specify a method to check whether SMART autosave is enabled. Unlike SCSI (below),
smartctl is unable to print a warning if autosave is disabled.
[SCSI] For SCSI devices this toggles the value of the Global Logging Target Save Disabled (GLTSD) bit in the Con-
trol Mode Page. Some disk manufacturers set this bit by default. This prevents error counters, power-up hours and
other useful data from being placed in non-volatile storage, so these values may be reset to zero the next time
the device is power-cycled. If the GLTSD bit is set then 'smartctl -a' will issue a warning. Use on to clear the
GLTSD bit and thus enable saving counters to non-volatile storage. For extreme streaming-video type applications
you might consider using off to set the GLTSD bit.
SMART READ AND DISPLAY DATA OPTIONS:
-H, --health
Check: Ask the device to report its SMART health status or pending TapeAlert messages. SMART status is based on
information that it has gathered from online and offline tests, which were used to determine/update its SMART ven-
dor-specific Attribute values. TapeAlert status is obtained by reading the TapeAlert log page.
If the device reports failing health status, this means either that the device has already failed, or that it is
predicting its own failure within the next 24 hours. If this happens, use the '-a' option to get more informa-
tion, and get your data off the disk and to someplace safe as soon as you can.
-c, --capabilities
[ATA only] Prints only the generic SMART capabilities. These show what SMART features are implemented and how the
device will respond to some of the different SMART commands. For example it shows if the device logs errors, if
it supports offline surface scanning, and so on. If the device can carry out self-tests, this option also shows
the estimated time required to run those tests.
Note that the time required to run the Self-tests (listed in minutes) are fixed. However the time required to run
the Immediate Offline Test (listed in seconds) is variable. This means that if you issue a command to perform an
Immediate Offline test with the '-t offline' option, then the time may jump to a larger value and then count down
as the Immediate Offline Test is carried out. Please see REFERENCES below for further information about the the
flags and capabilities described by this option.
-A, --attributes
[ATA] Prints only the vendor specific SMART Attributes. The Attributes are numbered from 1 to 253 and have spe-
cific names and ID numbers. For example Attribute 12 is "power cycle count": how many times has the disk been pow-
ered up.
Each Attribute has a "Raw" value, printed under the heading "RAW_VALUE", and a "Normalized" value printed under
the heading "VALUE". [Note: smartctl prints these values in base-10.] In the example just given, the "Raw Value"
for Attribute 12 would be the actual number of times that the disk has been power-cycled, for example 365 if the
disk has been turned on once per day for exactly one year. Each vendor uses their own algorithm to convert this
"Raw" value to a "Normalized" value in the range from 1 to 254. Please keep in mind that smartctl only reports
the different Attribute types, values, and thresholds as read from the device. It does not carry out the conver-
sion between "Raw" and "Normalized" values: this is done by the disk's firmware.
The conversion from Raw value to a quantity with physical units is not specified by the SMART standard. In most
cases, the values printed by smartctl are sensible. For example the temperature Attribute generally has its raw
value equal to the temperature in Celsius. However in some cases vendors use unusual conventions. For example
the Hitachi disk on my laptop reports its power-on hours in minutes, not hours. Some IBM disks track three temper-
atures rather than one, in their raw values. And so on.
Each Attribute also has a Threshold value (whose range is 0 to 255) which is printed under the heading "THRESH".
If the Normalized value is less than or equal to the Threshold value, then the Attribute is said to have failed.
If the Attribute is a pre-failure Attribute, then disk failure is imminent.
Each Attribute also has a "Worst" value shown under the heading "WORST". This is the smallest (closest to fail-
ure) value that the disk has recorded at any time during its lifetime when SMART was enabled. [Note however that
some vendors firmware may actually increase the "Worst" value for some "rate-type" Attributes.]
The Attribute table printed out by smartctl also shows the "TYPE" of the Attribute. Attributes are one of two pos-
sible types: Pre-failure or Old age. Pre-failure Attributes are ones which, if less than or equal to their
threshold values, indicate pending disk failure. Old age, or usage Attributes, are ones which indicate
end-of-product life from old-age or normal aging and wearout, if the Attribute value is less than or equal to the
threshold. Please note: the fact that an Attribute is of type 'Pre-fail' does not mean that your disk is about to
fail! It only has this meaning if the Attribute's current Normalized value is less than or equal to the threshold
value.
If the Attribute's current Normalized value is less than or equal to the threshold value, then the "WHEN_FAILED"
column will display "FAILING_NOW". If not, but the worst recorded value is less than or equal to the threshold
value, then this column will display "In_the_past". If the "WHEN_FAILED" column has no entry (indicated by a
dash: '-') then this Attribute is OK now (not failing) and has also never failed in the past.
The table column labeled "UPDATED" shows if the SMART Attribute values are updated during both normal operation
and off-line testing, or only during offline testing. The former are labeled "Always" and the latter are labeled
"Offline".
So to summarize: the Raw Attribute values are the ones that might have a real physical interpretation, such as
"Temperature Celsius", "Hours", or "Start-Stop Cycles". Each manufacturer converts these, using their detailed
knowledge of the disk's operations and failure modes, to Normalized Attribute values in the range 1-254. The cur-
rent and worst (lowest measured) of these Normalized Attribute values are stored on the disk, along with a Thresh-
old value that the manufacturer has determined will indicate that the disk is going to fail, or that it has
exceeded its design age or aging limit. smartctl does not calculate any of the Attribute values, thresholds, or
types, it merely reports them from the SMART data on the device.
Note that starting with ATA/ATAPI-4, revision 4, the meaning of these Attribute fields has been made entirely ven-
dor-specific. However most ATA/ATAPI-5 disks seem to respect their meaning, so we have retained the option of
printing the Attribute values.
[SCSI] For SCSI devices the "attributes" are obtained from the temperature and start-stop cycle counter log pages.
Certain vendor specific attributes are listed if recognised. The attributes are output in a relatively free format
(compared with ATA disk attributes).
-l TYPE, --log=TYPE
Prints either the SMART Error Log, the SMART Self-Test Log, the SMART Selective Self-Test Log [ATA only], the Log
Directory [ATA only], or the Background Scan Results Log [SCSI only]. The valid arguments to this option are:
error - [ATA] prints the Summary SMART error log. SMART disks maintain a log of the most recent five non-trivial
errors. For each of these errors, the disk power-on lifetime at which the error occurred is recorded, as is the
device status (idle, standby, etc) at the time of the error. For some common types of errors, the Error Register
(ER) and Status Register (SR) values are decoded and printed as text. The meanings of these are:
ABRT: Command ABoRTed
AMNF: Address Mark Not Found
CCTO: Command Completion Timed Out
EOM: End Of Media
ICRC: Interface Cyclic Redundancy Code (CRC) error
IDNF: IDentity Not Found
ILI: (packet command-set specific)
MC: Media Changed
MCR: Media Change Request
NM: No Media
obs: obsolete
TK0NF: TracK 0 Not Found
UNC: UNCorrectable Error in Data
WP: Media is Write Protected
In addition, up to the last five commands that preceded the error are listed, along with a timestamp measured from
the start of the corresponding power cycle. This is displayed in the form Dd+HH:MM:SS.msec where D is the number
of days, HH is hours, MM is minutes, SS is seconds and msec is milliseconds. [Note: this time stamp wraps after
2^32 milliseconds, or 49 days 17 hours 2 minutes and 47.296 seconds.] The key ATA disk registers are also
recorded in the log. The final column of the error log is a text-string description of the ATA command defined by
the Command Register (CR) and Feature Register (FR) values. Commands that are obsolete in the most current
(ATA-7) spec are listed like this: READ LONG (w/ retry) [OBS-4], indicating that the command became obsolete with
or in the ATA-4 specification. Similarly, the notation [RET-N] is used to indicate that a command was retired in
the ATA-N specification. Some commands are not defined in any version of the ATA specification but are in common
use nonetheless; these are marked [NS], meaning non-standard.
The ATA Specification (ATA-5 Revision 1c, Section 8.41.6.8.2) says: "Error log structures shall include UNC
errors, IDNF errors for which the address requested was valid, servo errors, write fault errors, etc. Error log
data structures shall not include errors attributed to the receipt of faulty commands such as command codes not
implemented by the device or requests with invalid parameters or invalid addresses." The definitions of these
terms are:
UNC (UNCorrectable): data is uncorrectable. This refers to data which has been read from the disk, but for which
the Error Checking and Correction (ECC) codes are inconsistent. In effect, this means that the data can not be
read.
IDNF (ID Not Found): user-accessible address could not be found. For READ LOG type commands, IDNF can also indi-
cate that a device data log structure checksum was incorrect.
If the command that caused the error was a READ or WRITE command, then the Logical Block Address (LBA) at which
the error occurred will be printed in base 10 and base 16. The LBA is a linear address, which counts 512-byte
sectors on the disk, starting from zero. (Because of the limitations of the SMART error log, if the LBA is
greater than 0xfffffff, then either no error log entry will be made, or the error log entry will have an incorrect
LBA. This may happen for drives with a capacity greater than 128 GiB or 137 GB.) On Linux systems the smartmon-
tools web page has instructions about how to convert the LBA address to the name of the disk file containing the
erroneous disk sector.
Please note that some manufacturers ignore the ATA specifications, and make entries in the error log if the device
receives a command which is not implemented or is not valid.
error - [SCSI] prints the error counter log pages for reads, write and verifies. The verify row is only output if
it has an element other than zero.
xerror[,NUM][,error] - [ATA only] [NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] prints the Extended Comprehensive SMART
error log (General Purpose Log address 0x03). Unlike the Summary SMART error log (see '-l error' above), it pro-
vides sufficient space to log the contents of the 48-bit LBA register set introduced with ATA-6. It also supports
logs with more than one sector. Each sector holds up to 4 log entries. The actual number of log sectors is ven-
dor specific, typical values for HDD are 2 (Samsung), 5 (Seagate) or 6 (WD). Some recent SSD devices have much
larger error logs.
Only the 8 most recent error log entries are printed by default. This number can be changed by the optional
parameter NUM.
If ',error' is appended and the Extended Comprehensive SMART error log is not supported, the Summary SMART self-
test log is printed.
Please note that some recent (e.g. Samsung) drives report errors only in the Extended Comprehensive SMART error
log. The Summary SMART error log can be read but is always empty.
selftest - [ATA] prints the SMART self-test log. The disk maintains a self-test log showing the results of the
self tests, which can be run using the '-t' option described below. For each of the most recent twenty-one
self-tests, the log shows the type of test (short or extended, off-line or captive) and the final status of the
test. If the test did not complete successfully, then the percentage of the test remaining is shown. The time at
which the test took place, measured in hours of disk lifetime, is also printed. [Note: this time stamp wraps after
2^16 hours, or 2730 days and 16 hours, or about 7.5 years.] If any errors were detected, the Logical Block Address
(LBA) of the first error is printed in decimal notation. On Linux systems the smartmontools web page has instruc-
tions about how to convert this LBA address to the name of the disk file containing the erroneous block.
selftest - [SCSI] the self-test log for a SCSI device has a slightly different format than for an ATA device. For
each of the most recent twenty self-tests, it shows the type of test and the status (final or in progress) of the
test. SCSI standards use the terms "foreground" and "background" (rather than ATA's corresponding "captive" and
"off-line") and "short" and "long" (rather than ATA's corresponding "short" and "extended") to describe the type
of the test. The printed segment number is only relevant when a test fails in the third or later test segment.
It identifies the test that failed and consists of either the number of the segment that failed during the test,
or the number of the test that failed and the number of the segment in which the test was run, using a vendor-spe-
cific method of putting both numbers into a single byte. The Logical Block Address (LBA) of the first error is
printed in hexadecimal notation. On Linux systems the smartmontools web page has instructions about how to con-
vert this LBA address to the name of the disk file containing the erroneous block. If provided, the SCSI Sense
Key (SK), Additional Sense Code (ASC) and Additional Sense Code Qualifier (ASQ) are also printed. The self tests
can be run using the '-t' option described below (using the ATA test terminology).
xselftest[,NUM][,selftest] - [ATA only] [NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] prints the Extended SMART self-test
log (General Purpose Log address 0x07). Unlike the SMART self-test log (see '-l selftest' above), it supports
48-bit LBA and logs with more than one sector. Each sector holds up to 19 log entries. The actual number of log
sectors is vendor specific, typical values are 1 (Seagate) or 2 (Samsung).
Only the 25 most recent log entries are printed by default. This number can be changed by the optional parameter
NUM.
If ',selftest' is appended and the Extended SMART self-test log is not supported, the old SMART self-test log is
printed.
selective - [ATA only] Please see the '-t select' option below for a description of selective self-tests. The
selective self-test log shows the start/end Logical Block Addresses (LBA) of each of the five test spans, and
their current test status. If the span is being tested or the remainder of the disk is being read-scanned, the
current 65536-sector block of LBAs being tested is also displayed. The selective self-test log also shows if a
read-scan of the remainder of the disk will be carried out after the selective self-test has completed (see '-t
afterselect' option) and the time delay before restarting this read-scan if it is interrupted (see '-t pending'
option). This is a new smartmontools feature; please report unusual or incorrect behavior to the smartmon-
tools-support mailing list.
directory[,gs] - [ATA only] if the device supports the General Purpose Logging feature set (ATA-6 and above) then
this prints the Log Directory (the log at address 0). The Log Directory shows what logs are available and their
length in sectors (512 bytes). The contents of the logs at address 1 [Summary SMART error log] and at address 6
[SMART self-test log] may be printed using the previously-described error and selftest arguments to this option.
If your version of smartctl supports 48-bit ATA commands, both the General Purpose Log (GPL) and SMART Log (SL)
directories are printed in one combined table. The output can be restricted to the GPL directory or SL directory
by '-l directory,q' or '-l directory,s' respectively.
background - [SCSI only] the background scan results log outputs information derived from Background Media Scans
(BMS) done after power up and/or periodocally (e.g. every 24 hours) on recent SCSI disks. If supported, the BMS
status is output first, indicating whether a background scan is currently underway (and if so a progress percent-
age), the amount of time the disk has been powered up and the number of scans already completed. Then there is a
header and a line for each background scan "event". These will typically be either recovered or unrecoverable
errors. That latter group may need some attention. There is a description of the background scan mechansim in sec-
tion 4.18 of SBC-3 revision 6 (see www.t10.org ).
scttemp, scttempsts, scttemphist - [ATA only] prints the disk temperature information provided by the SMART Com-
mand Transport (SCT) commands. The option 'scttempsts' prints current temperature and temperature ranges returned
by the SCT Status command, 'scttemphist' prints temperature limits and the temperature history table returned by
the SCT Data Table command, and 'scttemp' prints both. The temperature values are preserved across power cycles.
The default temperature logging interval is 1 minute and can be configured with the '-t scttempint,N[,p]' option,
see below. The SCT commands are specified in the proposed ATA-8 Command Set (ACS), and are already implemented in
some recent ATA-7 disks.
scterc[,READTIME,WRITETIME] - [ATA only] [NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] prints values and descriptions of the
SCT Error Recovery Control settings. These are equivalent to TLER (as used by Western Digital), CCTL (as used by
Samsung and Hitachi) and ERC (as used by Seagate). READTIME and WRITETIME arguments (deciseconds) set the speci-
fied values. Values of 0 disable the feature, other values less than 65 are probably not supported. For RAID con-
figurations, this is typically set to 70,70 deciseconds.
sataphy[,reset] - [SATA only] [NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] prints values and descriptions of the SATA Phy
Event Counters (General Purpose Log address 0x11). If '-l sataphy,reset' is specified, all counters are reset
after reading the values.
sasphy[,reset] - [SAS (SCSI) only] [NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] prints values and descriptions of the SAS
(SSP) Protocol Specific log page (log page 0x18). If '-l sasphy,reset' is specified, all counters are reset after
reading the values.
gplog,ADDR[,FIRST[-LAST|+SIZE]] - [ATA only] [NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] prints a hex dump of any log
accessible via General Purpose Logging (GPL) feature. The log address ADDR is the hex address listed in the log
directory (see '-l directory' above). The range of log sectors (pages) can be specified by decimal values
FIRST-LAST or FIRST+SIZE. FIRST defaults to 0, SIZE defaults to 1. LAST can be set to 'max' to specify the last
page of the log.
smartlog,ADDR[,FIRST[-LAST|+SIZE]] - [ATA only] [NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] prints a hex dump of any log
accessible via SMART Read Log command. See '-l gplog,...' above for parameter syntax.
For example, all these commands:
smartctl -l gplog,0x80,10-15 /dev/sda
smartctl -l gplog,0x80,10+6 /dev/sda
smartctl -l smartlog,0x80,10-15 /dev/sda
print pages 10-15 of log 0x80 (first host vendor specific log).
The hex dump format is compatible with the 'xxd -r' command. This command:
smartctl -l gplog,0x11 /dev/sda | grep ^0 | xxd -r >log.bin
writes a binary representation of the one sector log 0x11 (SATA Phy Event Counters) to file log.bin.
-v ID,FORMAT[:BYTEORDER][,NAME], --vendorattribute=ID,FORMAT[:BYTEORDER][,NAME]
[ATA only] Sets a vendor-specific raw value print FORMAT, an optional BYTEORDER and an optional NAME for Attribute
ID. This option may be used multiple times.
The Attribute ID can be in the range 1 to 255. If 'N' is specified as ID, the settings for all Attributes are
changed.
The optional BYTEORDER consists of 1 to 8 characters from the set '012345rvwz'. The characters '0' to '5' select
the byte 0 to 5 from the 48-bit raw value, 'r' selects the reserved byte of the attribute data block, 'v' selects
the normalized value, 'w' selects the worst value and 'z' inserts a zero byte. The default BYTEORDER is '543210'
for all 48-bit formats, 'r543210' for the 54-bit formats, and '543210wv' for the 64-bit formats. For example, '-v
5,raw48:012345' prints the raw value of attribute 5 with big endian instead of little endian byte ordering.
The NAME is a string of letters, digits and underscore.
-v help - Prints (to STDOUT) a list of all valid arguments to this option, then exits.
Valid arguments for FORMAT are:
raw8 - Print the Raw value as six 8-bit unsigned base-10 integers. This may be useful for decoding the meaning of
the Raw value.
raw16 - Print the Raw value as three 16-bit unsigned base-10 integers. This may be useful for decoding the mean-
ing of the Raw value.
raw48 - Print the Raw value as a 48-bit unsigned base-10 integer. This is the default for most attributes.
hex48 - Print the Raw value as a 12 digit hexadecimal number. This may be useful for decoding the meaning of the
Raw value.
raw64 - Print the Raw value as a 64-bit unsigned base-10 integer. This includes two bytes from the normalized and
worst attribute value. This new raw format is used by some recent SSD devices.
hex64 - Print the Raw value as a 16 digit hexadecimal number. This includes two bytes from the normalized and
worst attribute value. This new raw format is used by some recent SSD devices.
min2hour - Raw Attribute is power-on time in minutes. Its raw value will be displayed in the form "Xh+Ym". Here
X is hours, and Y is minutes in the range 0-59 inclusive. Y is always printed with two digits, for example "06"
or "31" or "00".
sec2hour - Raw Attribute is power-on time in seconds. Its raw value will be displayed in the form "Xh+Ym+Zs".
Here X is hours, Y is minutes in the range 0-59 inclusive, and Z is seconds in the range 0-59 inclusive. Y and Z
are always printed with two digits, for example "06" or "31" or "00".
halfmin2hour - Raw Attribute is power-on time, measured in units of 30 seconds. This format is used by some Sam-
sung disks. Its raw value will be displayed in the form "Xh+Ym". Here X is hours, and Y is minutes in the range
0-59 inclusive. Y is always printed with two digits, for example "06" or "31" or "00".
msec24hour32 - Raw Attribute is power-on time measured in 32-bit hours and 24-bit milliseconds since last hour
update. It will be displayed in the form "Xh+Ym+Z.Ms". Here X is hours, Y is minutes, Z is seconds and M is mil-
liseconds.
tempminmax - Raw Attribute is the disk temperature in Celsius. Info about Min/Max temperature is printed if
available. This is the default for Attributes 190 and 194. The recording interval (lifetime, last power cycle,
last soft reset) of the min/max values is device specific.
temp10x - Raw Attribute is ten times the disk temperature in Celsius.
raw16(raw16) - Print the raw attribute as a 16-bit value and two optional 16-bit values if these words are
nonzero. This is the default for Attributes 5 and 196.
raw16(avg16) - Raw attribute is spin-up time. It is printed as a 16-bit value and an optional "Average" 16-bit
value if the word is nonzero. This is the default for Attribute 3.
raw24/raw24 - Raw Attribute contains two 24-bit values. The first is the number of load cycles. The second is the
number of unload cycles. The difference between these two values is the number of times that the drive was unex-
pectedly powered off (also called an emergency unload). As a rule of thumb, the mechanical stress created by one
emergency unload is equivalent to that created by one hundred normal unloads.
raw24/raw32 - Raw attribute is an error rate which consists of a 24-bit error count and a 32-bit total count.
The following old arguments to '-v' are also still valid:
9,minutes - same as: 9,min2hour,Power_On_Minutes.
9,seconds - same as: 9,sec2hour,Power_On_Seconds.
9,halfminutes - same as: 9,halfmin2hour,Power_On_Half_Minutes.
9,temp - same as: 9,tempminmax,Temperature_Celsius.
192,emergencyretractcyclect - same as: 192,raw48,Emerg_Retract_Cycle_Ct
193,loadunload - same as: 193,raw24/raw24.
194,10xCelsius - same as: 194,temp10x,Temperature_Celsius_x10.
194,unknown - same as: 194,raw48,Unknown_Attribute.
197,increasing - same as: 197,raw48,Total_Pending_Sectors. Also means that Attribute number 197 (Current Pending
Sector Count) is not reset if uncorrectable sectors are reallocated (see smartd.conf(5) man page).
198,increasing - same as: 198,raw48,Total_Offl_Uncorrectabl. Also means that Attribute number 198 (Offline Uncor-
rectable Sector Count) is not reset if uncorrectable sectors are reallocated (see smartd.conf(5) man page).
198,offlinescanuncsectorct - same as: 198,raw48,Offline_Scan_UNC_SectCt.
200,writeerrorcount - same as: 200,raw48,Write_Error_Count.
201,detectedtacount - same as: 201,raw48,Detected_TA_Count.
220,temp - same as: 220,raw48,Temperature_Celsius.
Note: a table of hard drive models, listing which Attribute corresponds to temperature, can be found at:
http://www.guzu.net/linux/hddtemp.db
-F TYPE, --firmwarebug=TYPE
[ATA only] Modifies the behavior of smartctl to compensate for some known and understood device firmware or driver
bug. Except 'swapid', the arguments to this option are exclusive, so that only the final option given is used.
The valid values are:
none - Assume that the device firmware obeys the ATA specifications. This is the default, unless the device has
presets for '-F' in the device database (see note below).
samsung - In some Samsung disks (example: model SV4012H Firmware Version: RM100-08) some of the two- and four-byte
quantities in the SMART data structures are byte-swapped (relative to the ATA specification). Enabling this
option tells smartctl to evaluate these quantities in byte-reversed order. Some signs that your disk needs this
option are (1) no self-test log printed, even though you have run self-tests; (2) very large numbers of ATA errors
reported in the ATA error log; (3) strange and impossible values for the ATA error log timestamps.
samsung2 - In some Samsung disks the number of ATA errors reported is byte swapped. Enabling this option tells
smartctl to evaluate this quantity in byte-reversed order. An indication that your Samsung disk needs this option
is that the self-test log is printed correctly, but there are a very large number of errors in the SMART error
log. This is because the error count is byte swapped. Thus a disk with five errors (0x0005) will appear to have
20480 errors (0x5000).
samsung3 - Some Samsung disks (at least SP2514N with Firmware VF100-37) report a self-test still in progress with
0% remaining when the test was already completed. Enabling this option modifies the output of the self-test execu-
tion status (see options '-c' or '-a' above) accordingly.
Note that an explicit '-F' option on the command line will over-ride any preset values for '-F' (see the '-P'
option below).
swapid - Fixes byte swapped ATA identify strings (device name, serial number, firmware version) returned by some
buggy device drivers.
-P TYPE, --presets=TYPE
[ATA only] Specifies whether smartctl should use any preset options that are available for this drive. By default,
if the drive is recognized in the smartmontools database, then the presets are used.
smartctl can automatically set appropriate options for known drives. For example, the Maxtor 4D080H4 uses
Attribute 9 to stores power-on time in minutes whereas most drives use that Attribute to store the power-on time
in hours. The command-line option '-v 9,minutes' ensures that smartctl correctly interprets Attribute 9 in this
case, but that option is preset for the Maxtor 4D080H4 and so need not be specified by the user on the smartctl
command line.
The argument show will show any preset options for your drive and the argument showall will show all known drives
in the smartmontools database, along with their preset options. If there are no presets for your drive and you
think there should be (for example, a -v or -F option is needed to get smartctl to display correct values) then
please contact the smartmontools developers so that this information can be added to the smartmontools database.
Contact information is at the end of this man page.
The valid arguments to this option are:
use - if a drive is recognized, then use the stored presets for it. This is the default. Note that presets will
NOT over-ride additional Attribute interpretation ('-v N,something') command-line options or explicit '-F' com-
mand-line options..
ignore - do not use presets.
show - show if the drive is recognized in the database, and if so, its presets, then exit.
showall - list all recognized drives, and the presets that are set for them, then exit.
The '-P showall' option takes up to two optional arguments to match a specific drive type and firmware version.
The command:
smartctl -P showall
lists all entries, the command:
smartctl -P showall 'MODEL'
lists all entries matching MODEL, and the command:
smartctl -P showall 'MODEL' 'FIRMWARE'
lists all entries for this MODEL and a specific FIRMWARE version.
-B [+]FILE, --drivedb=[+]FILE
[ATA only] [NEW EXPERIMENTAL SMARTCTL FEATURE] Read the drive database from FILE. The new database replaces the
built in database by default. If '+' is specified, then the new entries prepend the built in entries.
If this option is not specified, optional entries are read from the file /etc/smart_drivedb.h (Windows:
EXEDIR/drivedb-add.h). If /usr/share/smartmontools/drivedb.h (Windows: EXEDIR/drivedb.h) is present, the contents
of this file is used instead of the built in table.
Run the script /usr/sbin/update-smart-drivedb to update this file from the smartmontools SVN repository.
The database files use the same C/C++ syntax that is used to initialize the built in database array. C/C++ style
comments are allowed. Example:
/* Full entry: */
{
"Model family", // Info about model family/series.
"MODEL1.*REGEX", // Regular expression to match model of device.
"VERSION.*REGEX", // Regular expression to match firmware version(s).
"Some warning", // Warning message.
"-v 9,minutes" // String of preset -v and -F options.
},
/* Minimal entry: */
{
"", // No model family/series info.
"MODEL2.*REGEX", // Regular expression to match model of device.
"", // All firmware versions.
"", // No warning.
"" // No options preset.
},
/* USB ID entry: */
{
"USB: Device; Bridge", // Info about USB device and bridge name.
"0x1234:0xabcd", // Regular expression to match vendor:product ID.
"0x0101", // Regular expression to match bcdDevice.
"", // Not used.
"-d sat" // String with device type option.
},
/* ... */
SMART RUN/ABORT OFFLINE TEST AND SELF-TEST OPTIONS:
-t TEST, --test=TEST
Executes TEST immediately. The '-C' option can be used in conjunction with this option to run the short or long
(and also for ATA devices, selective or conveyance) self-tests in captive mode (known as "foreground mode" for
SCSI devices). Note that only one test type can be run at a time, so only one test type should be specified per
command line. Note also that if a computer is shutdown or power cycled during a self-test, no harm should result.
The self-test will either be aborted or will resume automatically.
The valid arguments to this option are:
offline - [ATA] runs SMART Immediate Offline Test. This immediately starts the test described above. This com-
mand can be given during normal system operation. The effects of this test are visible only in that it updates
the SMART Attribute values, and if errors are found they will appear in the SMART error log, visible with the '-l
error' option.
If the '-c' option to smartctl shows that the device has the "Suspend Offline collection upon new command" capa-
bility then you can track the progress of the Immediate Offline test using the '-c' option to smartctl. If the
'-c' option show that the device has the "Abort Offline collection upon new command" capability then most commands
will abort the Immediate Offline Test, so you should not try to track the progress of the test with '-c', as it
will abort the test.
offline - [SCSI] runs the default self test in foreground. No entry is placed in the self test log.
short - [ATA] runs SMART Short Self Test (usually under ten minutes). This command can be given during normal
system operation (unless run in captive mode - see the '-C' option below). This is a test in a different category
than the immediate or automatic offline tests. The "Self" tests check the electrical and mechanical performance
as well as the read performance of the disk. Their results are reported in the Self Test Error Log, readable with
the '-l selftest' option. Note that on some disks the progress of the self-test can be monitored by watching this
log during the self-test; with other disks use the '-c' option to monitor progress.
short - [SCSI] runs the "Background short" self-test.
long - [ATA] runs SMART Extended Self Test (tens of minutes). This is a longer and more thorough version of the
Short Self Test described above. Note that this command can be given during normal system operation (unless run
in captive mode - see the '-C' option below).
long - [SCSI] runs the "Background long" self-test.
conveyance - [ATA only] runs a SMART Conveyance Self Test (minutes). This self-test routine is intended to iden-
tify damage incurred during transporting of the device. This self-test routine should take on the order of minutes
to complete. Note that this command can be given during normal system operation (unless run in captive mode - see
the '-C' option below).
select,N-M, select,N+SIZE - [ATA only] runs a SMART Selective Self Test, to test a range of disk Logical Block
Addresses (LBAs), rather than the entire disk. Each range of LBAs that is checked is called a "span" and is spec-
ified by a starting LBA (N) and an ending LBA (M) with N less than or equal to M. The range can also be specified
as N+SIZE. A span at the end of a disk can be specified by N-max.
For example the commands:
smartctl -t select,10-20 /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,10+11 /dev/hda
both runs a self test on one span consisting of LBAs ten to twenty (inclusive). The command:
smartctl -t select,100000000-max /dev/hda
run a self test from LBA 100000000 up to the end of the disk. The '-t' option can be given up to five times, to
test up to five spans. For example the command:
smartctl -t select,0-100 -t select,1000-2000 /dev/hda
runs a self test on two spans. The first span consists of 101 LBAs and the second span consists of 1001 LBAs.
Note that the spans can overlap partially or completely, for example:
smartctl -t select,0-10 -t select,5-15 -t select,10-20 /dev/hda
The results of the selective self-test can be obtained (both during and after the test) by printing the SMART
self-test log, using the '-l selftest' option to smartctl.
Selective self tests are particularly useful as disk capacities increase: an extended self test (smartctl -t long)
can take several hours. Selective self-tests are helpful if (based on SYSLOG error messages, previous failed
self-tests, or SMART error log entries) you suspect that a disk is having problems at a particular range of Logi-
cal Block Addresses (LBAs).
Selective self-tests can be run during normal system operation (unless done in captive mode - see the '-C' option
below).
The following variants of the selective self-test command use spans based on the ranges from past tests already
stored on the disk:
select,redo[+SIZE] - [ATA only] redo the last SMART Selective Self Test using the same LBA range. The starting LBA
is identical to the LBA used by last test, same for ending LBA unless a new span size is specified by optional
+SIZE argument.
For example the commands:
smartctl -t select,10-20 /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,redo /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,redo+20 /dev/hda
have the same effect as:
smartctl -t select,10-20 /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,10-20 /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,10-29 /dev/hda
select,next[+SIZE] - [ATA only] runs a SMART Selective Self Test on the LBA range which follows the range of the
last test. The starting LBA is set to (ending LBA +1) of the last test. A new span size may be specified by the
optional +SIZE argument.
For example the commands:
smartctl -t select,0-999 /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,next /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,next+2000 /dev/hda
have the same effect as:
smartctl -t select,0-999 /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,1000-1999 /dev/hda
smartctl -t select,2000-3999 /dev/hda
If the last test ended at the last LBA of the disk, the new range starts at LBA 0. The span size of the last span
of a disk is adjusted such that the total number of spans to check the full disk will not be changed by future
uses of '-t select,next'.
select,cont[+SIZE] - [ATA only] performs a 'redo' (above) if the self test status reports that the last test was
aborted by the host. Otherwise it run the 'next' (above) test.
afterselect,on - [ATA only] perform an offline read scan after a Selective Self-test has completed. This option
must be used together with one or more of the select,N-M options above. If the LBAs that have been specified in
the Selective self-test pass the test with no errors found, then read scan the remainder of the disk. If the
device is powered-cycled while this read scan is in progress, the read scan will be automatically resumed after a
time specified by the pending timer (see below). The value of this option is preserved between selective
self-tests.
afterselect,off - [ATA only] do not read scan the remainder of the disk after a Selective self-test has completed.
This option must be use together with one or more of the select,N-M options above. The value of this option is
preserved between selective self-tests.
pending,N - [ATA only] set the pending offline read scan timer to N minutes. Here N is an integer in the range
from 0 to 65535 inclusive. If the device is powered off during a read scan after a Selective self-test, then
resume the test automatically N minutes after power-up. This option must be use together with one or more of the
select,N-M options above. The value of this option is preserved between selective self-tests.
scttempint,N[,p] - [ATA only] set the time interval for SCT temperature logging to N minutes. If ',p' is speci-
fied, the setting is preserved across power cycles. Otherwise, the setting is volatile and will be reverted to
default (1 minute), or last non-volatile setting by the next hard reset. This command also clears the temperature
history table. See '-l scttemp' above for more information about SCT temperature logging.
vendor,N - [ATA only] issues the ATA command SMART EXECUTE OFF-LINE IMMEDIATE with subcommand N in LBA LOW regis-
ter. The subcommand is specified as a hex value in the range 0x00 to 0xff. Subcommands 0x40-0x7f and 0x90-0xff are
reserved for vendor specific use, see table 61 of T13/1699-D Revision 6a (ATA8-ACS).
WARNING: Only run subcommands documented by the vendor of the device.
Example for Intel X18-M/X25-M G2 SSDs only: The subcommand 0x40 ('-t vendor,0x40') clears the timed workload
related SMART attributes (226, 227, 228).
-C, --captive
[ATA] Runs self-tests in captive mode. This has no effect with '-t offline' or if the '-t' option is not used.
WARNING: Tests run in captive mode may busy out the drive for the length of the test. Only run captive tests on
drives without any mounted partitions!
[SCSI] Runs the self-test in "Foreground" mode.
-X, --abort
Aborts non-captive SMART Self Tests. Note that this command will abort the Offline Immediate Test routine only if
your disk has the "Abort Offline collection upon new command" capability.
ATA, SCSI command sets and SAT
In the past there has been a clear distinction between storage devices that used the ATA and SCSI command sets. This dis-
tinction was often reflected in their device naming and hardware. Now various SCSI transports (e.g. SAS, FC and iSCSI)
can interconnect to both SCSI disks (e.g. FC and SAS) and ATA disks (especially SATA). USB and IEEE 1394 storage devices
use the SCSI command set externally but almost always contain ATA or SATA disks (or flash). The storage subsystems in
some operating systems have started to remove the distinction between ATA and SCSI in their device naming policies.
99% of operations that an OS performs on a disk involve the SCSI INQUIRY, READ CAPACITY, READ and WRITE commands, or
their ATA equivalents. Since the SCSI commands are slightly more general than their ATA equivalents, many OSes are gener-
ating SCSI commands (mainly READ and WRITE) and letting a lower level translate them to their ATA equivalents as the need
arises. An important note here is that "lower level" may be in external equipment and hence outside the control of an OS.
SCSI to ATA Translation (SAT) is a standard (ANSI INCITS 431-2007) that specifies how this translation is done. For the
other 1% of operations that an OS performs on a disk, SAT provides two options. First is an optional ATA PASS-THROUGH
SCSI command (there are two variants). The second is a translation from the closest SCSI command. Most current interest
is in the "pass-through" option.
The relevance to smartmontools (and hence smartctl) is that its interactions with disks fall solidly into the "1%" cate-
gory. So even if the OS can happily treat (and name) a disk as "SCSI", smartmontools needs to detect the native command
set and act accordingly. As more storage manufacturers (including external SATA drives) comply with SAT, smartmontools
is able to automatically distinguish the native command set of the device. In some cases the '-d sat' option is needed on
the command line.
There are also virtual disks which typically have no useful information to convey to smartmontools, but could conceivably
in the future. An example of a virtual disk is the OS's view of a RAID 1 box. There are most likely two SATA disks inside
a RAID 1 box. Addressing those SATA disks from a distant OS is a challenge for smartmontools. Another approach is running
a tool like smartmontools inside the RAID 1 box (e.g. a Network Attached Storage (NAS) box) and fetching the logs via a
browser.
EXAMPLES
smartctl -a /dev/hda
Print a large amount of SMART information for drive /dev/hda which is typically an ATA (IDE) or SATA disk in Linux.
smartctl -a /dev/sdb
Print a large amount of SMART information for drive /dev/sda . This may be a SCSI disk or an ATA (SATA) disk.
smartctl -s off /dev/hdd
Disable SMART monitoring and data log collection on drive /dev/hdd .
smartctl --smart=on --offlineauto=on --saveauto=on /dev/hda
Enable SMART on drive /dev/hda, enable automatic offline testing every four hours, and enable autosaving of SMART
Attributes. This is a good start-up line for your system's init files. You can issue this command on a running system.
smartctl -t long /dev/hdc
Begin an extended self-test of drive /dev/hdc. You can issue this command on a running system. The results can be seen
in the self-test log visible with the '-l selftest' option after it has completed.
smartctl -s on -t offline /dev/hda
Enable SMART on the disk, and begin an immediate offline test of drive /dev/hda. You can issue this command on a running
system. The results are only used to update the SMART Attributes, visible with the '-A' option. If any device errors
occur, they are logged to the SMART error log, which can be seen with the '-l error' option.
smartctl -A -v 9,minutes /dev/hda
Shows the vendor Attributes, when the disk stores its power-on time internally in minutes rather than hours.
smartctl -q errorsonly -H -l selftest /dev/hda
Produces output only if the device returns failing SMART status, or if some of the logged self-tests ended with errors.
smartctl -q silent -a /dev/hda
Examine all SMART data for device /dev/hda, but produce no printed output. You must use the exit status (the $? shell
variable) to learn if any Attributes are out of bound, if the SMART status is failing, if there are errors recorded in
the self-test log, or if there are errors recorded in the disk error log.
smartctl -a -d 3ware,0 /dev/sda
Examine all SMART data for the first ATA disk connected to a 3ware RAID controller card.
smartctl -a -d 3ware,0 /dev/twe0
Examine all SMART data for the first ATA disk connected to a 3ware RAID 6000/7000/8000 controller card.
smartctl -a -d 3ware,0 /dev/twa0
Examine all SMART data for the first ATA disk connected to a 3ware RAID 9000 controller card.
smartctl -a -d 3ware,0 /dev/twl0
Examine all SMART data for the first SATA (not SAS) disk connected to a 3ware RAID 9750 controller card.
smartctl -t short -d 3ware,3 /dev/sdb
Start a short self-test on the fourth ATA disk connected to the 3ware RAID controller card which is the second SCSI
device /dev/sdb.
smartctl -t long -d areca,4 /dev/sg2
Start a long self-test on the fourth SATA disk connected to an Areca RAID controller addressed by /dev/sg2.
smartctl -a -d hpt,1/3 /dev/sda (under Linux)
smartctl -a -d hpt,1/3 /dev/hptrr (under FreeBSD)
Examine all SMART data for the (S)ATA disk directly connected to the third channel of the first HighPoint RocketRAID con-
troller card.
smartctl -t short -d hpt,1/1/2 /dev/sda (under Linux)
smartctl -t short -d hpt,1/1/2 /dev/hptrr (under FreeBSD)
Start a short self-test on the (S)ATA disk connected to second pmport on the first channel of the first HighPoint Rocke-
tRAID controller card.
smartctl -t select,10-100 -t select,30-300 -t afterselect,on -t pending,45 /dev/hda
Run a selective self-test on LBAs 10 to 100 and 30 to 300. After the these LBAs have been tested, read-scan the remain-
der of the disk. If the disk is power-cycled during the read-scan, resume the scan 45 minutes after power to the device
is restored.
smartctl -a -d cciss,0 /dev/cciss/c0d0
Examine all SMART data for the first SCSI disk connected to a cciss RAID controller card.
RETURN VALUES
The return values of smartctl are defined by a bitmask. If all is well with the disk, the return value (exit status) of
smartctl is 0 (all bits turned off). If a problem occurs, or an error, potential error, or fault is detected, then a
non-zero status is returned. In this case, the eight different bits in the return value have the following meanings for
ATA disks; some of these values may also be returned for SCSI disks.
Bit 0: Command line did not parse.
Bit 1: Device open failed, or device did not return an IDENTIFY DEVICE structure.
Bit 2: Some SMART command to the disk failed, or there was a checksum error in a SMART data structure (see '-b' option
above).
Bit 3: SMART status check returned "DISK FAILING".
Bit 4: We found prefail Attributes <= threshold.
Bit 5: SMART status check returned "DISK OK" but we found that some (usage or prefail) Attributes have been <= threshold
at some time in the past.
Bit 6: The device error log contains records of errors.
Bit 7: The device self-test log contains records of errors.
To test within the shell for whether or not the different bits are turned on or off, you can use the following
type of construction (this is bash syntax):
smartstat=$(($? & 8))
This looks at only at bit 3 of the exit status $? (since 8=2^3). The shell variable $smartstat will be nonzero
if SMART status check returned "disk failing" and zero otherwise.
NOTES
The TapeAlert log page flags are cleared for the initiator when the page is read. This means that each alert condition is
reported only once by smartctl for each initiator for each activation of the condition.
AUTHOR
Bruce Allen smartmontools-supportATlists.net
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Physics Department
CONTRIBUTORS
The following have made large contributions to smartmontools:
Casper Dik (Solaris SCSI interface)
Christian Franke (Windows interface, C++ redesign, USB support, ...)
Douglas Gilbert (SCSI subsystem)
Guido Guenther (Autoconf/Automake packaging)
Geoffrey Keating (Darwin ATA interface)
Eduard Martinescu (FreeBSD interface)
Frederic L. W. Meunier (Web site and Mailing list)
Gabriele Pohl (Web site and Wiki, conversion from CVS to SVN)
Keiji Sawada (Solaris ATA interface)
Manfred Schwarb (Drive database)
Sergey Svishchev (NetBSD interface)
David Snyder and Sergey Svishchev (OpenBSD interface)
Phil Williams (User interface and drive database)
Yuri Dario (OS/2, eComStation interface)
Shengfeng Zhou (Linux/FreeBSD HighPoint RocketRAID interface)
Many other individuals have made smaller contributions and corrections.
CREDITS
This code was derived from the smartsuite package, written by Michael Cornwell, and from the previous UCSC smartsuite
package. It extends these to cover ATA-5 disks. This code was originally developed as a Senior Thesis by Michael Corn-
well at the Concurrent Systems Laboratory (now part of the Storage Systems Research Center), Jack Baskin School of Engi-
neering, University of California, Santa Cruz. http://ssrc.soe.ucsc.edu/ .
HOME PAGE FOR SMARTMONTOOLS:
Please see the following web site for updates, further documentation, bug reports and patches: http://smartmon-
tools.sourceforge.net/
SEE ALSO:
smartd(8), badblocks(8), ide-smart(8).
REFERENCES FOR SMART
An introductory article about smartmontools is Monitoring Hard Disks with SMART, by Bruce Allen, Linux Journal, January
2004, pages 74-77. This is http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983 online.
If you would like to understand better how SMART works, and what it does, a good place to start is with Sections 4.8 and
6.54 of the first volume of the 'AT Attachment with Packet Interface-7' (ATA/ATAPI-7) specification Revision 4b. This
documents the SMART functionality which the smartmontools utilities provide access to. This and other versions of this
Specification are available from the T13 web site http://www.t13.org/ .
The functioning of SMART was originally defined by the SFF-8035i revision 2 and the SFF-8055i revision 1.4 specifica-
tions. These are publications of the Small Form Factors (SFF) Committee.
Links to these and other documents may be found on the Links page of the smartmontools Wiki at http://source-
forge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/Links .
SVN ID OF THIS PAGE:
$Id: smartctl.8.in 3186 2010-10-16 13:09:11Z chrfranke $
smartmontools-5.40 2010-10-16 SMARTCTL(8)
