[smartmontools-support] SMART Support occasionally disables itself

[Christian S. <sk...@ar...>]

Hi,

i have a strange problem with SMART Support. Occasionally SMART gets 
disabled on my drive.
Running "smartctl --smart=on /dev/disk0" usually helps for a couple of 
minutes, but that's not working for smartd obviously.

I tracked the problem down (or so I thought):
whenever iStatMenus (tool to display various sensor data) reads the 
HardDrive Temperature SMART gets disabled.
Occasionally the Problem still appears, even without any other SMART 
tools running.

My questions:
- is it possible to ask smartd to issue a "SMART Enable" Command before 
reading data?
- is there any way to track down why I might be having that problem in 
the first place?


Thanks, Christian

----------------

System:
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Scorpio Blue Serial ATA family
Device Model:     WDC WD5000BEVT-75ZAT0
Serial Number:    WD-WXNY08SW5636
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Mon May 31 21:47:25 2010 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Disabled

A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more 
'-T permissive' options.

-----------------

smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [i386-apple-darwin10.3.0] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Scorpio Blue Serial ATA family
Device Model:     WDC WD5000BEVT-75ZAT0
Serial Number:    WD-WXNY08SW5636
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Mon May 31 22:06:00 2010 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF ENABLE/DISABLE COMMANDS SECTION ===
SMART Enabled.

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)	Offline data collection activity
					was never started.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)	The previous self-test routine 
completed
					without error or no self-test has ever
					been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: 		 (13200) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
					Suspend Offline collection upon new
					command.
					Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					Conveyance Self-test supported.
					Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
					power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 ( 154) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: 	       (0x303f)	SCT Status supported.
					SCT Feature Control supported.
					SCT Data Table supported.