SANTA CRUZ — A UC Santa Cruz undergrad has released new technology augmenting the growing free Linux operating system movement.

Michael Cornwell, a software engineer at hard-disk drive maker Quantum Corp. in Milpitas, presented the new technology — Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) — as an independent study project. SMART monitors the performance of hard-disk drives and alerts users when a hard-drive failure is imminent.

Cornwell earned his bachelor of arts degree in computer science at UCSC this year.

“It adds an important capability that Linux was lacking,” said Darrell Long, associate professor of computer science and associate dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at UCSC.

The release of the software to the open-source community is an important development, said Long, who was Cornwell’s adviser on the project.

“What’s been done here is a very cool thing,” Long said. “Linux is considered to be very cool thing now. People are going crazy for it.”

The open source software movement, spearheaded by the Linux operating system, is based on making source code for software programs freely available so that other software programmers can modify it and adapt it to their individual needs. Linux, initially created by Linus Torvalds, has been further developed through the efforts of many independent programmers working on the open source code. In contrast, companies such as Microsoft consider their software’s source code a trade secret to be closely guarded. As Linux has become more popular, demand for Linux- compatible software has increased.

Cornwell estimated there are 8 million Linux users. “It is being used on everything from personal computers to large networks and Web servers,” he said.