Check Your Hard Drive Smart Status Using A GUI

Checking your hard drives Smart status is preventive damage control.
It lets you see if your hard drive is slowly failing or is healthy.
But in Linux the standard smartmon tools can be a bit of a hassle to set up and interpret the results.

I have my smartmon tools set to do a Smart scan once a day and send the results to a log file.
That means remembering to open the log file and read it. Something I neglect to do on a regular basis. Also setting up the smartmon tools in the command line may be a bit over the top for the new user. Many new users are terrified of the terminal and don't want to be bothered wading through log files.
I needed something that allowed me to check the Smart status on demand and provide the results in 'Real' time with a Graphical User Interface (GUI).

GSmartControl (GSC) fills all those needs plus adds a few other features.
Each time you open GSC it does a check of the hard drives installed in your system.
You can view the capabilities of each hard drive, attributes, error log and self test log.
It also has 2 test modes that allow you to run a diagnostic test on the hard drive to make sure it is good.

GSC can be downloaded from it's home page found here;
GSmartControl Website

http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/home/index.php/en/Home

They have packages for all the popular Linux distros and an exe installer for Windows users although they will need to install GTK+ first.

As Linux matures we will find more software that provides the user with a GUI.
Some purists may not be happy with the proliferation of GUI's and tend to snub them as the GUI is not true Linux but the mainstream user wants or even demands a GUI.

Now go and grab this nice utility and know that you can now easily check your hard drive for possible problems.

Enjoy!