Linux: Monitor Hard Disks Temperature With hddtemp

There is a nice utility to monitor hard drive temperature. Most modern x86 computer hard disk comes with S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology). It is a monitoring system for computer hard disks to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures.

=> hddtemp utility will give you the temperature of your hard drive by reading data from S.M.A.R.T. on drives that support this feature. Only modern hard drives have a temperature sensor. hddtemp supports reading S.M.A.R.T. information from SCSI drives too. hddtemp can work as simple command line tool or as a daemon to get information from all servers.

Install hddtemp

To install hddtemp under Debian / Ubuntu Linux, enter:
$ sudo apt-get install hddtemp
You can also perform source code installation. Download the source code tar ball here.
$ wget http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/hddtemp/hddtemp-0.3-beta15.tar.bz2
Untar and install hddtemp:
$ tar -jxvf hddtemp-0.3-beta15.tar.bz2
$ cd hddtemp-0.3-beta15
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Install hard disk temperature database at /usr/share/misc or /etc directory:
$ cd /usr/share/misc
# wget http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/hddtemp/hddtemp.db


How do I monitor hard disk temperature?

To see temperature for /dev/sda, enter the following command:
# hddtemp /dev/sda
Output:

/dev/sda: WDC WD2500YS-01SHB1:  25°C

Above output indicate that my hard disk temperature is 25°C. If temperature is higher than 60°С , consider cooling options immediately.

How Do I Find Out Remote Server HDD Temperature?

By default hddtemp bind to TCP/IP port 7634. You need to run hddtemp in daemon mode. Login on remote box and start it as follows to monitor /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, and /dev/sdd:
# hddtemp -d /dev/sd[abcd]
Use telnet or nc / netcat command to to get a temperature from a remote box:
$ telnet remotebox 7634
OR
$ nc 192.168.1.100 7634

Shutdown Linux Computer If Temperature >= 55

To power off / shutdown computer, run following command via cron tab (cron job) file:
[ $(hddtemp /dev/sda | awk '{ print $4}' | awk -F '°' '{ print $1}') -ge 55 ] && /sbin/shutdown -h 0 || :
Sample shell script to shutdown box if temperature >= 55°C (download link):

#!/bin/bash
HDDS="/dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc"
HDT=/usr/sbin/hddtemp
LOG=/usr/bin/logger
DOWN=/sbin/shutdown
ALERT_LEVEL=55
for disk in $HDDS
do
  if [ -b $disk ]; then
	HDTEMP=$($HDT $disk | awk '{ print $4}' | awk -F '°' '{ print $1}')
        if [ $HDTEMP -ge $ALERT_LEVEL ]; then
           $LOG "System going down as hard disk : $disk temperature $HDTEMP°C crossed its limit"
           sync;sync
           $DOWN -h 0
        fi
  fi
done

smartctl Utility

If you have smartctl utility installed, try it as follows to get temperature data:
# smartctl -d ata -A /dev/sda | grep -i temperature
Output:

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   122   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       28

Set ALERT_LEVEL as per your requirements. Please refer to your hard disk manual for working temperature guideline. Here is general temperature guideline (extracted from Seagate SV35.2 Series Hard Drives Web Page):

A note for Windows XP / Vista / Server Users

hddtemp is UNIX / Linux only program. You can download hddtemp trial version here.

Further readings

• hddtemp man page
• Official hddtemp home page

Updated for accuracy!

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