SMART-capable hard disks are commonplace these days, and there are a few tools that can help you to use this technology to monitor the health of your hard disk. The smartmontools toolset, for example, lets you monitor and manage hard disks from the command line, while the GSmartControl utility can be used to keep a close eye on the hard disks. Despite its simple interface, GSmartControl is a rather capable tool that automatically reports and highlights any anomalies, performs short self-checks every four hours, and provides comprehensive info about the hard disks and their capabilities.

The best part is that GSmartControl makes it supremely easy to monitor your hard disk's health. When you launch the utility, it shows all the detected hard disks. Select the disk you want, and your should see the disk's health status in the Basic health check section. To access other GSmartControl features, double-click on the hard disk icon. This opens the Device Information window containing a wealth of information and additional features. The Perform Tests section, for example, lets you run short and extended hard disk tests, while the Attributes section provides an overview of the hard disk parameters and their current status. GSmartControl provides an extensive online help, so to view a detailed description of a specific item in the list, hover the mouse over it.

GSmartControl is available in the software repositories of many popular Linux distributions, so it can be installed using your distro's package manager. On Ubuntu, you can install GSmartControl using the sudo apt-get install gsmartcontrol command.