Intensive Care
Linux provides several tools for maintaining mass storage. Gnome Disks combines the most important functions into one interface.
Toolbox for mass storage
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Amy Walters, 123RF.com
Hard drives, because of their complex mechanics, are sensitive to vibration, heat, voltage fluctuations, and power outages. Since the 1990s, hardware providers, notably IBM and Compaq, have pondered how to improve performance security. The resulting different technologies ultimately resulted in the 1996 Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) standard that monitors many hard drive hardware parameters and triggers alarms when thresholds are crossed. Although the parameters haven't been fully normalized, they've been embedded in the firmware of almost all hard drives in various forms.
Jumble
Even though all SATA hard drives in familiar form factors support SMART, their corresponding values aren't always readable. External drives running over the USB bus in particular reveal the data only when the USB-to-SATA bridge electronics provide a data tunnel, which isn't the case with many of the cheaper external drives.
The same is true for external mass storage with universal plugs. Even some of the more high-quality external hard drives that operate with combined USB and Firewire ports to the computer can't have their SMART values read for lack of bridge functions – even if the hard disk on the external device is SATA compliant.
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