libatasmart

To find out how to use this package, you need to go into a locked filing cabinet in a room labelled 'Beware of the Leopard'. Having done that, you can run the tests using the following method (as the root user):

sktest /dev/sdX short ; watch -d 'skdump /dev/sdX | head -n 20'

and then wait until the test completes (found on an ubuntu forum. Use sktest --help for other options).

If you are not building this as a required dependency of another application, it is generally much easier to use smartmontools ​https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki