GSmartControl - Useful Hard Disk Drive Health Inspection Tool For Linux

GSmartControl is a really useful Linux app to check the health of your hard disk drive. GSmartControl is basically a graphical user interface for smartctl, which is a tool for querying and controlling SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data on modern hard disk drives. Only ATA drives including both PATA and SATA are supported for now.


GSmartControl Features
  • GSmartControl can perform short and long duration self test of you HDD without any data loss. Self tests are completely safe and nothing happens to the user data.
  • Tests can be performed during normal system operation, but may take longer to complete if the drive is not idle.
  • Automatically reports and highlights any anomalies and also allows enabling/disabling SMART.
  • Allows enabling/disabling Automatic Offline Data Collection - a short self-check that the drive will perform automatically every four hours with no impact on performance.
  • Supports configuration of global and per-drive options for smartctl, performs SMART self-tests.
  • Displays drive identity information, capabilities, attributes, and self-test/error logs.
How to Install GSmartControl in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx?
  • GSmartControl hard disk health inspection tool is available in Ubuntu repositories. Either you can search and install it directly from Ubuntu Software Center or you could use the following command.
sudo apt-get install gsmartcontrol
  • Done. While installing, you will be asked for some mail configuration options. Make sure you selected 'no configuration' option unless you need to.
  • In order to start GSmartControl, you have to login as root. Hit ALT+F2 and type "gksudo gsmartcontrol"(without quotes) to start GSmartControl in Ubuntu as root.
  • Once you are in, GSmartControl will automatically detect your hard drive(it should be mounted, of course). Right click on your hard drive image, and you will see options to do tests.
Also Read ..