Freedom251 › Disk Health Monitoring Software
SMART Sniffer
What SMART Sniffer is
SMART Sniffer monitors disk health and sends early warning signs to Home Assistant. Its Attention Needed sensor checks ATA, SATA, NVMe, and SAS drives, reporting NO, MAYBE, YES, or UNSUPPORTED. Persistent Home Assistant notifications can trigger when drive health changes, with options to escalate, de-escalate, and dismiss automatically. A lightweight Go agent runs on each monitored machine, and each drive appears as its own Home Assistant device. Agents advertise over local-network mDNS/Zeroconf, so Home Assistant can discover them without manual IP entry. Optional filesystem monitoring reports total, used, and available bytes plus usage percentage for configured mountpoints. The integration provides a service call with SMART data and assessments that can be passed to Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude, or Ollama. The agent also exposes HTTP endpoints for health, drive summaries, individual drive data, and configured filesystem usage. SMART Sniffer is free and MIT-licensed, with Linux, macOS, and Windows installation instructions. It requires smartmontools 7.0 or newer for JSON output. USB enclosures that block SMART passthrough are marked unsupported with unknown health.
Who it suits
SMART Sniffer suits Home Assistant users who want disk-health warnings from Linux, macOS, or Windows machines. It also fits users who want optional filesystem usage monitoring alongside drive status.
What it does well
- Monitors ATA, SATA, NVMe, and SAS drives
- Can automatically escalate or dismiss health notifications
- Discovers agents over local-network mDNS/Zeroconf
- Includes optional filesystem usage monitoring
What to know first
- Requires smartmontools 7.0 or newer
- USB enclosures blocking SMART passthrough show unknown health
- Bearer-token authentication is optional rather than required
Limits
The agent requires smartmontools 7.0 or newer for JSON output. USB enclosures that block SMART passthrough are marked UNSUPPORTED with Health: Unknown.
Plans
| Plan | Billed and limits | Price |
|---|---|---|
| SMART Sniffer | MIT-licensed Home Assistant integration and Go agent | Free |
| Open source | Home Assistant integration · Go agent · self-hosted deployment | Free |
As github.com lists them, read 3 Oct 2026. The maker's own page has the final word.
Getting started
- Open the SMART Sniffer project website on GitHub.
- Install the Home Assistant integration through HACS or manually.
- Install the Go agent on each monitored Linux, macOS, or Windows machine using its platform instructions.
- Make sure smartmontools 7.0 or newer is available for JSON output support.
- Allow Home Assistant to discover the agents over the local network, or configure optional bearer-token authentication between agent and integration.
Verdict
SMART Sniffer brings drive health reporting from multiple machines into Home Assistant and includes optional filesystem monitoring. Its smartmontools requirement and the USB passthrough limitation may affect which drives it can report on.
Questions
How much does SMART Sniffer cost?
It is free. The listed SMART Sniffer plan costs nothing.
Is SMART Sniffer open source?
The project is MIT-licensed.
Which systems does it support?
Its platforms include Linux, macOS, Windows, API, and self-hosted use.
What drives can it monitor?
The Attention Needed sensor covers ATA, SATA, NVMe, and SAS drives. USB enclosures that block SMART passthrough are marked UNSUPPORTED with unknown health.
How is it installed?
The Home Assistant integration can be installed through HACS or manually. Agent installation instructions are provided for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Who makes SMART Sniffer?
The repository identifies DAB-LABS as its maker.
Facts from SMART Sniffer's own pages
- AI integration
- The smart_sniffer.get_drive_data service returns cached SMART data, health assessments, filesystem usage and agent metadata for use with Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude or Ollama. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- API
- The agent exposes HTTP endpoints including /api/health, /api/filesystems and /api/pools, and accepts configurable port, scan interval and token settings. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- App component
- The separate Home Assistant OS app displays local and remote drives in a web-based Control Center and can feed the same integration entities, alerts and history. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Authentication
- Bearer-token authentication is optional; when configured, agent requests must include an Authorization header, while unconfigured agents serve data without authentication. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Auto-discovery
- Agents advertise over mDNS/Zeroconf so Home Assistant can discover them without manually entering an IP address. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Discovery
- Agents advertise over local-network mDNS/Zeroconf so Home Assistant can discover them without manual IP entry. · github.com, 3 Oct 2026
- Disk usage
- Optional filesystem monitoring reports total, used and available space plus percentage for selected mountpoints through an API endpoint. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Docker deployment
- An independent Docker image documents amd64 and arm64 support, host networking for mDNS, configurable port 9099, 60-second scans and optional tokens. · hub.docker.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Docker security
- The community Docker image requests SYS_RAWIO for SATA/SAS and SYS_ADMIN for NVMe instead of running fully privileged. · hub.docker.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Documentation depth
- Documentation includes configuration examples, discovery troubleshooting, sensor definitions, attention logic, changelog entries and contribution guidance. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Download security
- Installers verify downloaded binaries with SHA256 checksums. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Drive coverage
- Its Attention Needed sensor monitors ATA, SATA, NVMe, and SAS drives and reports NO, MAYBE, YES, or UNSUPPORTED. · github.com, 3 Oct 2026
- Drive standby
- Standby mode can avoid waking sleeping drives and serves cached readings with a data_as_of timestamp. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Failure classification
- The Attention Needed sensor classifies drives as NO, MAYBE, YES, or UNSUPPORTED using indicators such as reallocated, pending and uncorrectable errors. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Installation
- Linux and macOS use install.sh, Windows uses install.ps1, and Home Assistant installation is available through HACS or manual component copying. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- The integration provides a service call with SMART data and assessments that can be passed to Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude, or Ollama. · github.com, 3 Oct 2026
- Licence
- The repository is published under the MIT License. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- License and maker
- The repository identifies the project as MIT-licensed and built by DAB-LABS. · github.com, 3 Oct 2026
- Limit: macOS telemetry
- Device Statistics is always disabled on macOS because the operating system does not permit reading that log. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Limit: network discovery
- mDNS discovery is link-local, so agents on different VLANs require an mDNS reflector. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Limit: USB passthrough
- USB enclosures that block SMART passthrough are reported as unsupported or unknown because the limitation is in the bridge hardware. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Maker legal identity
- DAB LABS LTD, company number 16895678, trades as Dab Labs according to its privacy policy. · dablabs.ai, 14 Oct 2026
- Maker LinkedIn profile
- LinkedIn describes Dab-Labs as a design consultancy with 11–50 employees, founded in 2022. · linkedin.com, 14 Oct 2026
- Multi-machine monitoring
- A separate lightweight agent can run on every monitored machine, with each drive represented as its own Home Assistant device. · github.com, 14 Oct 2026
Where SMART Sniffer stands on Freedom251
- Disk Health Monitoring Software#1 of 30