ide-smart and proactive drive monitoring

[Andrew Pollock <andrew@andrew.net.au>]

Hi,

It just crossed me as being a good idea (tm) to monitor my hard drives in case
of imminent failure, and sure enough the ide-smart package exists. Cool. One
problem, I have no idea how to read the output:

daedalus:/usr/doc/ide-smart# ide-smart /dev/hda
Id=  1, Status=41 {PreFailure , OffLine}, Value=100, Threshold= 20, Passed
Id=  3, Status=39 {PreFailure , OnLine }, Value= 57, Threshold= 20, Passed
Id=  4, Status=50 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold=  8, Passed
Id=  5, Status=51 {PreFailure , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 20, Passed
Id=  7, Status=11 {PreFailure , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 23, Passed
Id=  9, Status=18 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value= 94, Threshold=  1, Passed
Id= 10, Status=38 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 20, Passed
Id= 11, Status=19 {PreFailure , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 20, Passed
Id= 12, Status=50 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold=  8, Passed
Id= 13, Status=11 {PreFailure , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 23, Passed
Id=199, Status=26 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=200, Threshold=  0, Passed
Id=196, Status=16 {Advisory    , OffLine}, Value=100, Threshold= 20, Passed
Id=197, Status=50 {Advisory    , OnLine }, Value=100, Threshold= 20, Passed
Id=198, Status=16 {Advisory    , OffLine}, Value=100, Threshold=  0, Passed
OffLineStatus=0 {NeverStarted}, AutoOffLine=No, OffLineTimeout=0 minutes
OffLineCapability=27 {Immediate Auto SuspendOnCmd}
SmartRevision=11, CheckSum=189, SmartCapability=3 {SaveOnStandBy AutoSave}

Does anyone know how to decipher it, or of any good SMART references?

Andrew