For a productive server it is senseful if you should always be aware of the health of your hard drives. On Linux you can configure Smartmontools to send you an e-mail if a drive error occurs.

You will have to write the following line to the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf , replace your@mail.adr with your e-mail address:

DEVICESCAN -H -l selftest -m your@mail.adr

After this, restart Smartmontools:

/etc/init.d/smartmontools restart

Important! It is necessary that a mail server is configured to send outgoing mails. If there is no mail server or it is not correctly configured, you won't receive any mail.