Can't check SMART data on SSD?

Question

I'm trying to check SMART data. I have Ubuntu 18.04 installed on Kingston A1000, M.2 - 480GB SSD.

I can check all other disks but this.

milano@milano-PC:~$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/nvme0n1p1

/dev/nvme0n1p1:
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Do you know how to check it?

Solution

Since SSD drives are designed to use completely different parameters than HDDs, most SMART utilities do not report SSD data correctly. The smartmontools package for linux contains a utility to scan for SSDs which will report drive health.

Install the smartmontools package from the command line:

sudo apt install smartmontools

Then use the smartctl tool with the following command where X is the letter of the SSD you want to test (in your case it would be /dev/nvme0n1p1 instead of /dev/sdX):

sudo smartctl -i /dev/sdX

You can a short test on the SSD with this command:

sudo smartctl -t short -a /dev/sdX

Or also a long test with this command:

sudo smartctl -t long -a /dev/sdX

Comments

[Boris Hamanov]

Apparently it doesn't support SMART. Check for a firmware update for the SSD.