SMARTAttribute

SMARTAttribute refers to the set of metrics reported by a storage device's SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) system. These attributes describe the device’s health and operational condition, including error rates, wear indicators, and environmental factors such as temperature. They are designed to provide early warning of impending failure and to help with maintenance decisions.

Each SMART attribute is identified by an ID and a name, and is reported with three values: a raw value, a normalized value, and a worst value. In many implementations the normalized value is on a 1–100 or 0–255 scale and is intended for quick assessment, while the raw value reflects the device’s internal measurement. A threshold defined by the drive’s firmware indicates when the attribute performance is considered degraded. SMART data is exposed by the device through standard interfaces such as ATA/SATA or NVMe.

Common SMART attributes cover aspects like error rates, media integrity, and wear. Examples include Reallocated Sector Count, Spin Retry Count or Seek Error Rate on HDDs, Current Pending Sector and Offline Uncorrectable, Power-On Hours, and Temperature. SSDs may expose wear leveling counts or endurance-related metrics. Attribute names and interpretation can vary by vendor and drive model, so cross-model comparisons should be approached with caution.

Interpretation of SMARTAttribute data relies on monitoring trends and contextual judgment. A single degraded attribute does not guarantee failure, but a pattern of deteriorating values or crossing thresholds increases risk. Practical use cases include automated health dashboards and predictive maintenance workflows. Tools such as smartmontools or vendor-provided utilities are commonly used to read and analyze SMART attributes.

See also SMART, disk health monitoring, and drive reliability assessment.