Smartmontools
software
smartmontools (S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring Tools) is a set of utility programs (smartctl and smartd) to control and monitor computer storage systems using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) system built into most modern (P)ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI/SAS and NVMe hard drives.
smartmontools displays early warning signs of hard drive problems detected by S.M.A.R.T., often giving notice of impending failure while it is still possible to back data up.
From late 2010 ATA Error Recovery Control configuration has been supported by smartmontools, allowing it to configure many desktop- and laptop-class hard drives for use in a RAID array and vice versa.
Most Linux distributions provide the smartmontools package.
User interface
Native
smartctl and smartd have a command-line interface. By default the output of smartctl is in human readable form; for programmatic use, JSON output is also available.
Third-party GUI
GSmartControl is an open-source multi-platform graphical user interface (GUI) for smartctl developed by Alexander Shaduri.
SMART Utility is a program for Mac OS X with a GUI based on smartmontools.
HDD Guardian was an open-source Windows-only GUI for smartctl, discontinued on 28 April 2017. The author said that the program could still be downloaded from various sites, but that the entire HDD Guardian project (source code, builds and documentation) had been retired.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Smartmontools” as software. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as software. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7544141. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Smartmontools” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.