Smartmontools (S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring Tools)

Generally speaking, hard drives employ Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) to determine their reliability and predict critical errors and other issues. In case the HDD is acting slower than usual, then you need to view the hard drive's S.M.A.R.T. data to figure out if the device is starting to develop problems.

Considering that this type of information is unavailable by default in Windows, you are likely to require third-party software solutions to retrieve the data. Smartmontools is a command line interface application that enables you to use the access and analyze the built-in S.M.A.R.T. technology commonly found in the vast majority of SCSI/SAS, NVMe or ATA/SATA disks.

The program includes two major components, namely smartcd and smartct1, that enable you to monitor and manage the storage systems. Consequentially, you can configure the tools to schedule regular tests for your hard drive and trigger alerts when it detects that a failure of the disk is imminent.

It is important to note that in theory, the application should run on most modern hard disks and multiple platforms. On the other hand, you should keep in mind that you can encounter limitations that are mostly related to operating systems specific issues. After all, let us not forget that the device supports is not similar for all platforms.

Even though it is true that hard disk can fail without any warning in certain circumstances, Smartmontools can lend you a hand with identifying potential issues that can be avoided.