Check your hard drive’s temperature in Linux
I started using this program after frying a hard drive in 6 months. It was on the server and serving up Audio 24/7 and it was sandwiched between a cdrom drive and another hard drive. There was no air flow around the hard drive and subsequently it had a very short and very rough life. When it started failing at 6 months, I started investigating the possible cause and how to keep another for failing so quickly.
One of the tools that I started using was hddtemp. It can be run from the command line, so open up a konsole window and type hddtemp /dev/hda *(or like the example… /dev/hdb)
If you have a relatively recent hard drive you might see…
/dev/hdb: SAMSUNG SP1604N: 37°C
Although you may see something like this:
WARNING: Drive /dev/hdd doesn’t appear in the database of supported drives
WARNING: But using a common value, it reports something.
WARNING: Note that the temperature shown could be wrong.
WARNING: See –help, –debug and –drivebase options.
WARNING: And don’t forget you can add your drive to hddtemp.db
/dev/hdd: SAMSUNG SP1614N: 30°C or °F
Or, if you’re unlucky….
WARNING: Drive /dev/hda doesn’t seem to have a temperature sensor.
WARNING: This doesn’t mean it hasn’t got one.
WARNING: If you are sure it has one, please contact me (coredump@free.fr).
WARNING: See –help, –debug and –drivebase options.
/dev/hda: WDC WD1000JB-00CRA1: no sensor
The biggest problem I’ve run into is a curiousity about external USB drive temperatures, most USB/hard drive adapters don’t support S.M.A.R.T. which is what hddtemp relies on.