When using smartctl the return value can provide some useful information but it requires looking up what the individual set bits mean. After running smartctl on a large number of drives here are the codes I found and looked up:

• 32 = SMART status check returned “DISK OK” but we found that some (usage or pre-fail) Attributes have been <= threshold at some time in the past
• 64 = The device error log contains records of errors
• 96 = Both of the above

I’ve recently been enabling the monitoring of SMART via Munin. Most of the disks had SMART enabled, presumably thought the BIOS setting. When I came across one that wasn’t I realized I didn’t know how to enable it except through BIOS. Since this machine was located remotely I quickly figured out how to enable it via this command:

• smartctl -s on /dev/sdX