SMART data as audit evidence
A certificate says a drive was erased. SMART data shows what condition the drive was in when it happened — and that's often just as useful.
SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is the health telemetry built into nearly every drive. Captured before and after a wipe, it's a timestamped record of the drive's condition — and a useful piece of supporting evidence.
What tScrub captures
- Health status — the drive's overall SMART assessment.
- Temperature — before and after the wipe.
- Power-on hours — total runtime, useful for lifecycle claims.
- Wear indicators — reallocated sectors, percentage used, TB written.
Why it strengthens the audit trail
SMART data answers questions the certificate alone can't:
- Was the drive healthy before resale? — pre-wipe SMART shows it.
- Did the erase process itself change anything? — post-wipe SMART confirms the drive still reports healthy, or reveals a fault that emerged during the wipe.
- Which drive was this, really? — SMART data is tied to a specific serial number, reinforcing the chain of custody.
For ITAD and refurbishment work especially, showing a drive was healthy at the moment of erasure protects you in a later dispute about whether a resold drive was functional.
Where it appears
SMART data is recorded in the report CSV and surfaced in tScrub's per-drive reports in the dashboard. It also appears in the certificate's SMART annex when the report contains it. Like everything else in the report, it's covered by the report's signature.
FAQ
Do all drives report SMART data?
Most do, but not all — some controllers and RAID configurations hide it. tScrub records it when available and simply omits it when it isn't, so a missing value never looks like a failed capture.
Is SMART data required for compliance?
Not strictly — but it's high-quality supporting evidence that costs nothing to collect, and it makes the overall record harder to dispute.