I see there is a virtual file /proc/ide/hda/smart_values and I imagine it contains the smart data that smartmontools reads with the smartctl command.
Can I read that data with my own eyes? I see a bunch of numbers in the file and would like to determine the health of the drive without downloading and installing smartmontools.
Thanks!
Best Answer
Professionals don't reinvent the wheel -- people use smartmontools because that software is well-written, handles a large number of drive families, and Just Works.
Save yourself a lot of pain ad suffering and just install the standard tools.
If you want to implement this as a learning experience (i.e. not in a production environment where you're relying on it to tell you if you're about to lose a disk) then you can certainly do as SvW suggests and write your own SMART tools.
This is certainly not something I would want to do. Disks are terrible creatures and down that road lies only madness.