How to check the SSD health in Linux

Are you a Linux user looking for an easy way to check the health of your SSD? The smartctl tool is here to help! Part of the smartmontools package, smartctl allows you to check the health of your SSD from the command line. However, before you can use it, you’ll need to make sure the smartmontools package is installed on your system. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of installing and using smartctl to check your SSD health in Linux.

For Ubuntu, Mint or Debian based distributions:

apt-get install smartmontools

Fedora, Centos or Red Hat based distributions:

yum install smartmontools

But for most distros, we can install it using the application installer or the package manager/installer.

Once installed, run the following command in the terminal (in our case ‘sda’ is the volume we are checking, but you might need to replace it depending on the id of yours, for eample: sdb, sdc, etc.):

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep SSD_Life_Left

You should see something like this:

231 SSD_Life_Left  0x0000   095   095   000    Old_age   Offline      -       95

In our case, 95 means that our SSD drive is in a 95% condition.
A higher value indicates a better condition.

If we need more information about our SSD, run the following command:

sudo smartctl -data -A /dev/sda

The we get the following result:

smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.10.93-1-MANJARO] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       5089
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       416
148 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
149 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
167 Write_Protect_Mode      0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
168 SATA_Phy_Error_Count    0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
169 Bad_Block_Rate          0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       4
170 Bad_Blk_Ct_Erl/Lat      0x0000   100   100   010    Old_age   Offline      -       0/7
172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
173 MaxAvgErase_Ct          0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       92 (Average 62)
181 Program_Fail_Count      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Unsafe_Shutdown_Count   0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       38
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   035   042   000    Old_age   Always       -       35 (Min/Max 18/42)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
199 SATA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
218 CRC_Error_Count         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
231 SSD_Life_Left           0x0000   095   095   000    Old_age   Offline      -       95
233 Flash_Writes_GiB        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       11970
241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB     0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       5882
242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       6501
244 Average_Erase_Count     0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       62
245 Max_Erase_Count         0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       92
246 Total_Erase_Count       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       900240

That’s it!

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