S.M.A.R.T is a method through which devices monitor, store and analyze
information on their operational state. This state information is exported
through a set of attributes (e.g., temperature, number of reallocated sectors,
seek errors), which software solutions can use to measure the health of a
device, predict when a device may fail, and provide notifications when
attributes are approaching unsafe values.
One software solution that allows you to monitor and manage S.M.A.R.T devices
is smartmontools. smartmontools supports a wide variety of hardware and Operating
Systems (e.g., FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS X, OS/2, Solaris, Windows), contains
a complete set of documentation, and includes a command-line utility (smartctl(1m))
and UNIX daemon (smartd(1m)) that can be used to view S.M.A.R.T attributes, run
device self-tests, and notify support personnel when problems are detected.