Check this out ==> REFERENCE My aging laptop (running Windows) has some tools for checking the "health' of a Hard Drive -- ChkDsk for example. My new HP laptop (running Linux) has both a Hard Drive (HD) and an SSD. Q1- Does Linux have an app or command for checking the health of an HD? Q2- Does Linux have an app or command for checking the health of an SSD?
Hi bellgamin, There's GSmartControl. "GSmartControl is a graphical user interface for smartctl (from smartmontools package), which is a tool for querying and controlling SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data on modern hard disk and solid-state drives. It allows you to inspect the drive's SMART data to determine its health, as well as run various tests on it." I use GSmartControl for my HDDs. I haven't upgraded my systems with SSDs, so I haven't tried GSmartControl for SSDs. If one likes the command line alternative, smartmontools can be installed to run smartctl.
I just tried it on Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon and it does not recognise any of my 3 SSD's - M2 or SATA.
@Stupendous Man -- Many thanks for calling GSmartControl (GSC) to my attention. GSC is listed by Zorin Linux as "Hard Disk and SSD Health Inspection." Great! I just now installed GSC. It reported my Western Digital (WD) Hard Drive as "passed." Also, by right-clicking GSC's display for this drive, I got a menu whereby I could click "Details." Clicking "Details" got me a LOT of information PLUS the ability to have the drive do a self-test. GSC reported my SSD as "model unknown" and its status as "SMART not supported." My guess is that GSC has a list of drive model numbers that it is programmed to handle, & my SSD is too new to have made its list. Huh?
In the GSmartControl documentation, under Supported Hardware, only ATA is mentioned, not PCIe. If PCIe is not supported, that would make GSmartControl rather outdated. And if, apart prom PCIe, also not all SATA SSD are supported, that makes GSmartControl even less useful. So, I hope there is something better for Linux than GSmartControl, for SSD support.
Zorin's forum recommended Gnome Disks. However, Gnome Disks also reported my SSD as "no-go," for the same exact reasons as did GSmartControl. However, your suggestion at least gave me a handle on my computer's Hard Drive (HD). Further -- from a post I read on Zorin's forum -- HDs tend to fail little by little, & provide symptoms of their problems. OTOH, SSDs are more prone to all-at-once "surprise" failures. NO problema! Unless my computer is a magnet for attracting "bad luck," SSD failure is a long way off in the future. BTW, the Zorin forum also provided me with THIS link -- a very detailed article on checking drives via terminal commands. I'm not going to try this at my present level of learning Linux, but I do have it on my To-Do list. I provided the link here -- just in case some folks here at Wilders might be interested -- it is a very well written article.
I just looked and there is a Linux version of Hard Disk Sentinel. It is my preferred tool for checking the health of a SSD or hard drive in Windows. https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_linux.php https://www.hdsentinel.com/add-on-linux-installers.php
Thank you very much. Yes, I knew of Hard Disk Sentinel, but I wasn't sure it supports PCIe. But on the Linux Edition page, I see mentioned "28/2/2021 added support of newer SATA, SAS, NVMe M.2 PCie SSDs". Also, the Compatible SSD page shows a few PCIe SSDs. I don't know if any of the other mentioned SSDs are also PCIe. Thank you very much. Yes, I mentioned smartmontools and smartctl, also the article that bellgamin linked mentions smartctl. However, I wasn't sure it supports PCIe. The Smartmontools Device Support page links to the NVMe support page, and PCIe support is mentioned there.
I overlooked the fact that apart from the Hard Disk Sentinel Linux Edition console version, there's also a Hard Disk Sentinel Linux GUI (Graphical User Interface) package. Nice!
I tried the Hard Disk Sentinel Linux GUI version, and got the same error as was reported in 'Cannot start Hard Disk Sentinel Linux GUI'. It looks like it needs to be started from the terminal. That's rather messy, for a GUI version. I uninstalled it. If I need the terminal, I can use smartctl.
Thanks to @roger_m for alerting us to HD Sentinel. Unfortunately (for a Linux newbie like me) the instructions for installing it & getting it up & running are quite lengthy & involve use of the terminal. IMO, Linux will never attain popularity with every day users until its installers, like those used by Windows, do the whole job. Unlike other Distros I tried, the Distro I selected (Zorin Pro) does a Windows-like job of installing any of the very long list of apps on its package manager. Zorin just installs and POOF! The app is ready to launch.
I don't think the installation instructions as set out on the Hard Disk Sentinel Linux GUI page are required. I think it's sufficient to download the hdsentinel_gui64bit.tar.xz package, move it to a directory where you want it, extract it, in the now created HDSentinel_GUI directory extract HDSentinel_GUI.zip, and next in the HDSentinel_GUI directory execute the install.sh file. That can be done in the terminal, but that's not required. After installation, running the installed Hard Disk Sentinel Linux GUI, that's another matter, as I reported in my previous post. It looks like it needs to be started from the terminal. I don't like that for a GUI version, so I uninstalled it. Sadly, that still leaves us without a GUI application for modern (PCIe, NVMe) SSD. Isn't that the same for many distros? I think it's so for Ubuntu and Mint, and it's the same for Kubuntu. Of all the applications that I use on Kubuntu, I think only Ink, a command line tool for checking the printer ink level, needs to be installed from the terminal, and also the Dutch spelling checker for LibreOffice, hunspell-nl, needs to be installed in the terminal. And to be completely fair, on Kubuntu, libdvd, to play CSS encrypted DVD needs to be installed in the terminal.
@Stupendous Man asked, "Isn't that the same for many distros?" My answer: Not for the Distros that I tried. When asked to install an app, many of those Distros did so by streaming a long and detailed list, on-screen, of each and every action needed to do the install. Then they popped an alert asking me if it was okay. It's like asking someone the time of day, & they respond by showing you how to make a wristwatch.
@bellgamin, That sounds like fun, if one really loves to build wristwatches. But not so much fun if one is new to Linux. It doesn't even sound like fun if one isn't new to Linux. I had no idea you had such bad luck with finding the right distro. Regarding finding a GUI application for modern (PCIe, NVMe) SSD, I hope that gets better over time. For now, perhaps the demand for such an application is too low.
