How to check all S.M.A.R.T. logs location

Question

As in S.M.A.R.T log:

device log contains only the most recent five errors

Is there a possibility to see all logged errors of a S.M.A.R.T Enabled disk?

smartctl -xall

or

smartctl -all

The two commands above just show the last five and I need to retrieve the LBAs with problems to write zeroes to it and check the S.M.A.R.T again.

Solution 1

If you have installed smartmontools, and enabled smartd then all log entries are available in /var/log/syslog:

grep "smartd" /var/log/syslog*

For /dev/sda

grep "smartd.*/dev/sda" /var/log/syslog*

An other example:

$ grep "smartd.*/dev.*failure" /var/log/syslog*

/var/log/syslog:May 14 10:46:58 sturm smartd[608]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 120 to 104
/var/log/syslog:May 14 10:46:58 sturm smartd[608]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 117 to 119
/var/log/syslog.1:May 13 05:30:33 sturm smartd[631]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 110 to 113
/var/log/syslog.1:May 13 11:19:26 sturm smartd[651]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 113 to 115
/var/log/syslog.1:May 13 11:49:26 sturm smartd[651]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 120 to 100
/var/log/syslog.1:May 13 11:49:26 sturm smartd[651]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 115 to 117
/var/log/syslog.1:May 13 15:49:27 sturm smartd[651]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 100 to 102
/var/log/syslog.1:May 13 19:49:26 sturm smartd[651]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 102 to 104
/var/log/syslog.1:May 14 10:16:58 sturm smartd[608]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Prefailure Attribute: 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate changed from 104 to 120

Solution 2

I believe that the log on the drive itself contains only the last 5 errors. If you want to see the LBAs, you could run badblocks from a terminal window.

sudo badblocks -sv /dev/sdX

That will run a complete surface check on your drive and show you the locations of any bad blocks.

Comments

[A.B.]

First, your commands are wrong. Use this: sudo smartctl --xall /dev/sda and sudo smartctl --all /dev/sda

[Terrance]

It's a good answer, but this only works if you have already installed the smartmontools which are not installed by default.

[A.B.]

Yes, that's true. I will change my answer. And +1 for your answer.

[Terrance]

You got my +1. It is always good to see more ways of doing things that sometimes you forget about. Thank you!