Hard Disk Sentinel Linux Edition (FREE)

By using Hard Disk Sentinel Linux console edition, it is possible to examine the temperature and health information (and more) of IDE, S-ATA (SATA II also), SCSI and USB hard disks connected to motherboard or external controller cards. The user must be root to use this software or start it with sudo.

To display hard disk / SSD status in a graphical interface, download Hard Disk Sentinel Linux GUI (Graphical User Interface) package. Thanks for Gregory25!

To simplify starting Hard Disk Sentinel Linux Edition, it is possible to use one of the Linux Desktop Installers for the actual Linux distribution which allows starting directly from the desktop without the need of starting manually from a console. Thanks for Marc Sayer for these packages!

To receive daily status reports, please check the HDSentinel_EmailUtil.zip package. Thanks for Raul del Cid Lopez for this script!

List of features

display hard disk / solid state disk information on the terminal

create comprehensive report about the disk system, including both hard disk and SSD specific features (for example, media rotation rate, TRIM command, etc.)

display and manage acoustic setting of hard disks (on supported USB disks also)

offers outputs for both users and scripts/other applications to process

The following information are displayed:

detected hard disk number and device name (for example /dev/sda)

size, model ID, serial number, revision and interface of all detected hard disks

temperature, health and performance values

power on time (days, hour, minutes - if supported)

Note : this is for informational purposes only, the value displayed under Windows (after some minutes of testing) may be more accurate

: this is for informational purposes only, the value displayed under Windows (after some minutes of testing) may be more accurate acoustic management settings (if supported and -aam or -setaam option is used

Command line switches

The switches are NOT case sensitive. Upper and lower case can be used to specify them.

-h - displays help and usage information

- displays help and usage information -r [report file] - automatically save report to filename (default: report.txt)

- automatically save report to filename (default: report.txt) -html - use with -r to save HTML format report (-html -r report.html)

- use with -r to save HTML format report (-html -r report.html) -mht - use with -r to save MHT format report (-mht -r report.mht)

- use with -r to save MHT format report (-mht -r report.mht) -autosd - detect industrial SD card type and save flag file (see How to: monitor (micro) SD card health and status for more details)

- detect industrial SD card type and save flag file (see How to: monitor (micro) SD card health and status for more details) -dev /dev/sdX - detect and report only the specified device without accessing others

- detect and report only the specified device without accessing others -dump - dump report to stdout (can be used with -xml to dump XML output instead of text)

- dump report to stdout (can be used with -xml to dump XML output instead of text) -xml - create and save XML report instead of TXT

- create and save XML report instead of TXT -solid - solid output (drive, tempC, health%, power on hours, model, S/N, size)

- solid output (drive, tempC, health%, power on hours, model, S/N, size) -verbose - detailed detection information and save temporary files (only for debug purposes)

- detailed detection information and save temporary files (only for debug purposes) -aam - display acoustic management settings (current and recommended level)

- display acoustic management settings (current and recommended level) -setaam drive_num|ALL level(hex)80-FE|QUIET|LOUD - set acoustic level on drive 0..n (or all)

80 or QUIET is the lowest (most silent) setting, FE or LOUD is the highest (fastest) setting

For example: hdsentinel -setaam 0 loud - Configures drive 0 to fastest (loud) setting. Same as hdsentinel -setaam 0 FE

Please send saved XML or TXT reports, questions or ideas to info@hdsentinel.com to help improving this tool.

License

Hard Disk Sentinel Linux edition is FREE. You can freely distribute and use it to analyse hard disk status. However, if you like this tool and would like to keep it updated, please support further development by registering the Windows version of the software.

Usage of Hard Disk Sentinel Linux version

After downloading the file below, please follow these steps to use it:



double click to open and decompress it to any folder

open a terminal window and navigate to the folder

change file permissions to make it executable by using chmod 755 HDSentinel

launch it by entering sudo ./HDSentinel [options]

sudo is not required if you logged in as "root".

Examples

Optimize complete system for silence: hdsentinel -setaam all quiet

Optimize complete system for high performance (but louder disk access): hdsentinel -setaam all loud

Select a balanced level between silence and performance on drive 0: hdsentinel -setaam 0 C0

Note: some disks do not support balanced settings and they may select the most silent (80) or high performance (FE) setting instead.

Please start hsentinel without parameters to see drive assignments (eg. /dev/sda) to drive indexes.

Due to the high amount of requests, it is possible to create minimal output which can be easily parsed and processed for further use. Some examples are:

List disk drives, temperature (in Celsius), health %, power on hours, disk model, disk serial, size:

hdsentinel -solid. Sample results:



/dev/sda 42 3 4830 WDC_WD800JD-8LSA0 WD-WMAM9F937837 76324 /dev/sdb 30 100 6128 ST3250624A 5ND3J94R 238472 /dev/sdc 46 100 10982 WDC_WD2500JS-00MHB0 WD-WCANK8705209 238475 /dev/sdd ? ? ? GENERIC_CF_READER 9999 0 /dev/sde ? ? ? GENERIC_SD_READER 9999 1963

List only temperature, drive, size:

hdsentinel -solid | awk '{print $2, $1, $7}'



42 /dev/sda 76324 30 /dev/sdb 238472 46 /dev/sdc 238475 ? /dev/sdd 0 ? /dev/sde 1963

List only temperature, drive, model ID, highest temperature on top, drives without temperature information (for example card readers) removed:

hdsentinel -solid | awk '{print $2, $1, $5}' | grep -v "^?" | sort -nr



46 /dev/sdc WDC_WD2500JS-00MHB0 42 /dev/sda WDC_WD800JD-8LSA0 30 /dev/sdb ST3250624A

List only health, temperature, drive, lowest health on top, drives without temperature information (for example card readers) removed:

hdsentinel -solid | awk '{print $3, $2, $1}' | grep -v "^?" | sort -n



3 42 /dev/sda 100 30 /dev/sdb 100 46 /dev/sdc

Note that the spaces in hard disk model ID and serial number are replaced with underscore (_).

If you have any ideas, thoughts about the automatic processing of output or if you have complete script(s) you want to share with other users, please send a mail and it will be published on this page with the name and credits of the sender of the script.

7/11/2019 added detection of NVMe M.2 SSDs under Linux. Detect health, temperature and complete self-monitoring S.M.A.R.T. status of NVMe M.2 SSDs connected to motherboard (nvme0, nvme1, etc... devices) added detection of NVMe M.2 SSDs with USB-NVMe adapters based on ASMEDIA ASM236x and JMicron JMS583 chipsets added detection of SAS hard disk drives and SSDs configured as RAID with LSI, Intel, Dell SAS RAID controllers added support for new hard disk and SSD models, identify self-monitoring status of Kingston, Intel, Samsung, KingDian, Sandisk, LiteOn, ADATA, Crucial, Corsair, Lenovo, Apacer, WD SSDs added/improved support of various Western Digital, Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba hard disk drives added/improved support of Helium (He) filled hard disk drives added/improved support of numerous external USB adapters, USB-ATA bridges, docking stations fixed bug with empty memory card readers

0.17



30/8/2017 added detection of industrial micro SD cards under Linux. Detect status immediately if the detection method of the micro SD card previously configured under the Windows - or if -autosd command line parameter specified to detect and save the detection method and use in all sub-sequent detections under Windows or Linux.

Note: with Raspberry PI, it is not possible to detect internal memory card status, just status of card in external USB memory card reader. added support of ASMedia ASM1352R dual drive (RAID) enclosures: detection of complete status of both hard disks added -html command line option to save HTML format report (-html -r reportfile.html) added -mht command line option to save MHT format report (-mht -r reportfile.mht) added support of more than 26 drives, detection of additional drives when required added support for new hard disk and SSD models, identify self-monitoring status

0.16



13/9/2016 added support for Intel, IBM, LSI RAID controllers experimental support of JMicron external USB RAID boxes (contact for assistance) added support for 4000+ hard disk and SSD models, interpreting and displaying their self-monitoring status displaying lifetime writes for SSDs

0.08 - Download Hard Disk Sentinel Linux 0.08 version



6/3/2012 more hard disk drive / solid state disk details saved to report improved compatibility with USB hard disks and various disk controllers true 64 bit version released

0.03 - Download this version



21/7/2009 more hard disk drive / solid state disk details saved to report -aam and -setaam commands to modify acoustic level of disk drives -dump to dump report to stdout -solid option to create solid output for further processing improved power on time detection for Samsung, Maxtor, Toshiba, Fujitsu models improved detection of SCSI and USB drives detection of SCSI and USB drive capacities

0.02 - Download this version



25/7/2008 added support for SCSI and USB hard disks improved temperature detection on Fujitsu hard disks

0.01 - Download this version



29/4/2008 first initial version

Raspberry PI

NAS boxes with ARM CPU

The Linux version of Hard Disk Sentinel also available for NAS boxes built with ARM CPUs. The NAS box should have telnet / SSH access in order to download and use this tool.

To get Telnet / SSH access, special firmware version(s) or additional packages (like the fun_plug may be required. Putty tool is also required to connect the NAS box and access its console.

Usage:

get Telnet / SSH access to the NAS box and log-in to your device by using putty.exe

enter wget http://www.hdsentinel.com/hdslin/armv5/hdsentinelarm to download the latest ARMv5 CPU build.

To simplify things, the file is not compressed.

enter chmod 755 hdsentinelarm to set the proper permission (executable). You may use chmod +x hdsentinelarm instead.

enter ./hdsentinelarm to start the Hard Disk Sentinel on the NAS and get hard disk status information.

Tested on: