If have a chance you should look at the home page (http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/) (http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/)) for this project. They have a lot of great info available.
I am a Unix/Linux Professional here in the Twin Cites in Minnesota. I have been using Linux/Unix sence 1986, starting out using AT&T System V R4 Unix System. I have pretty much been using Unix since then. I have run the following Linux's day2day at different times. Red Hat Debian Ubuntu Slackware IPCop In addition I have used a variety of Unix's since then including (but not limited ...