Smartmontools is a utility package that monitors and controls the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) system built into modern hard drives. The package consists of two primary components: - smartctl: A command-line tool for controlling and monitoring SMART attributes - smartd: A daemon that continuously monitors drive health and can send notifications when problems are detected Smartmontools helps system administrators detect and anticipate disk failures before they occur, enabling proactive measures to prevent data loss. The tools can monitor various drive health parameters, run self-tests, and provide detailed information about the status of storage devices. The software supports a wide range of storage device types including IDE, SCSI, SATA, and other interfaces. It's designed to work across multiple operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows. By regularly checking drive health metrics, smartmontools can identify potential issues such as increasing bad sectors, temperature problems, or other indicators of impending drive failure, giving administrators time to back up data and replace hardware before catastrophic failures occur.