Keep an Eye on Your Hard Disk's Health with GSmartControl

Productivity Sauce
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.
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.