Re: [smartmontools-support] supported to see smart info, help...

[Bruce A. <ba...@gr...>]

John,

Immediately after I posted wrote this I found that a smartmontools user 
posted a patch 20 hours ago which implements ATACB support:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.utilities.smartmontools/5233/match=atacb

Please note that I have NOT tested this myself.

Cheers,
 	Bruce


On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, Bruce Allen wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> I don't think that in most cases you will be able to get SMART info from USB 
> drives.  In the past year, I have heard that one of the USB interface chip 
> vendors has started to support the pass-through of SMART commands and data, 
> but smartmontools has not been modified to retrieve or use data from this 
> device.
>
> Some information can be found here:
> http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/smartmontools_scsi.html
> Quoting directly:
>
> "It has been reported that many external USB enclosures use a "Cypress" 
> chipset. This contains an ATACB proprietary pass through (for ATA commands 
> passed through SCSI commands) for which some publicly available information 
> is available. Smartmontools has no ATACB specific code but may move in this 
> direction in the future. Another approach is to hope USB and SBP2 external 
> enclosures adopt the SAT standard in the near future. One interesting comment 
> about ATACB is that it should not be used at the same time as other types of 
> access to the disk (e.g. a mounted file system)! That implies that a disk 
> should be taken offline before smartmontools is used on it. It also implies 
> that the smartd background daemon should not be used."
>
> A Western Digital engineer has reported: "Our USB retail products are heading 
> towards using SAT as the passthru interface." 
> https://lists.one-eyed-alien.net/pipermail/usb-storage/2006-June/002517.html
> When this happens, the '-d sat' flag should be used to access SMART on those 
> devices.
>
> Cheers,
> 	Bruce
>
>
> On Sat, 23 Feb 2008, John Smith wrote:
>
>> I have been reading mail list and after one hour im a
>> little confused.
>> Im working with internal, external (usb case) and
>> external (adaptor sata/ide-usb) disk drives.
>> 
>> wich ones are supported to see smart info?
>> 
>> thanks!
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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