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SMART Sniffer
What it is
SMART Sniffer monitors disk health and reports early warning signs to Home Assistant. Its Attention Needed sensor covers ATA, SATA, NVMe, and SAS drives, returning NO, MAYBE, YES, or UNSUPPORTED. When a drive’s health changes, persistent Home Assistant notifications can appear automatically, escalate or de-escalate, and dismiss themselves. A lightweight Go agent runs on each monitored machine, and each drive appears as its own Home Assistant device. Agents announce themselves over local-network mDNS/Zeroconf for discovery without manual IP entry. Optional filesystem monitoring reports total, used, and available bytes plus usage percentage for configured mountpoints. The integration provides 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 SMART data, and configured filesystem usage. SMART Sniffer is free and MIT-licensed, with agent installation instructions for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It requires smartmontools 7.0 or newer for JSON output; USB enclosures that block SMART passthrough are marked UNSUPPORTED with unknown health.
For and against
For
- Monitors ATA, SATA, NVMe, and SAS drives.
- Notifies Home Assistant when drive health changes.
- Discovers agents over local-network mDNS/Zeroconf.
- Filesystem monitoring reports bytes and usage percentage.
- Free and MIT-licensed.
Against
- Requires smartmontools 7.0 or newer.
- USB enclosures blocking SMART passthrough show unknown health.
- Filesystem monitoring is opt-in.
The verdict
SMART Sniffer connects drive-health monitoring across machines to Home Assistant alerts and optional filesystem reporting. Its smartmontools requirement and USB passthrough limitation are important compatibility checks.
Who it suits
It suits Home Assistant users who want drive health warnings from machines running Linux, macOS, or Windows. Users should check that their drives and any USB enclosure provide SMART access.
Plans and prices
Open source
Home Assistant integration · Go agent · self-hosted deployment
Read 14 Oct 2026 · github.com
SMART Sniffer
MIT-licensed Home Assistant integration and Go agent
Read 3 Oct 2026 · github.com
On the record
- 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 · read 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 · read 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 · read 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 · read 14 Oct 2026
- Auto-discovery
- Agents advertise over mDNS/Zeroconf so Home Assistant can discover them without manually entering an IP address.github.com · read 14 Oct 2026
- Discovery
- Agents advertise over local-network mDNS/Zeroconf so Home Assistant can discover them without manual IP entry.github.com · read 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 · read 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 · read 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 · read 14 Oct 2026
- Documentation depth
- Documentation includes configuration examples, discovery troubleshooting, sensor definitions, attention logic, changelog entries and contribution guidance.github.com · read 14 Oct 2026
- Download security
- Installers verify downloaded binaries with SHA256 checksums.github.com · read 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 · read 3 Oct 2026
- Drive standby
- Standby mode can avoid waking sleeping drives and serves cached readings with a data_as_of timestamp.github.com · read 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 · read 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 · read 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 · read 3 Oct 2026
- Licence
- The repository is published under the MIT License.github.com · read 14 Oct 2026
- License and maker
- The repository identifies the project as MIT-licensed and built by DAB-LABS.github.com · read 3 Oct 2026
