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In a previous thread the answer # smartctl -a /dev/sda looks good. The problem by my side is the highly verbose output. Is possible to obtain something more human understadable, something like "hard drive good at 80%" or "grepping" the essentials from smarctl -a?

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  • This apple is 80% fresh.
    – gena2x
    Oct 14, 2014 at 16:53
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    No. Your drive will either pass or fail the test (see the first section where you should see a PASSED or FAILED status). Below you will find the SMART attributes table where you should look for Pre-fail attributes with a blank space in the FAILED column. If there is at least one of such attributes with FAILING_NOW status, backup your drive ASAP.
    – gacanepa
    Oct 14, 2014 at 16:56
  • @gena2x: More like "This apple will drop from 100% fresh to 99.9453% fresh in 32.63 days. Back up sometime this month, 'kay?" Once we've got that future prediction technology, maybe we can use it to detect Internet cable cuts in advance.
    – Warren Young
    Oct 14, 2014 at 17:34
  • OK, smartctl -H and "Your drive will either pass or fail the test (see the first section where you should see a PASSED or FAILED status)...ASAP" are greats for me.
    – Symb932
    Oct 14, 2014 at 19:10

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That's what smartctl -H does: it gives you a pass (no failure predicted) or fail (failure predicted in next 24h). SMART unfortunately doesn't give any way to ask a drive its expected remaining lifespan, other than that. Other than SSDs with their limited write durability, it probably isn't even possible to do in general.

You can get less output from smartctl with some of the other flags. For example -A will give only the attribute table. -l selftest will give only the selftest logs, etc.

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