[smartmontools-support] Reading S.M.A.R.T. values from devices connected to JMicron JMB393 (inside a Lian Li EX-50 e-sata case)

[Dennis B. <den...@rw...>]

Hi smartmontools-people,

i don't know if you are the right people to ask this question, but i try
and correct me if i was wrong:

I am using a Lian Li EX-50 [1] e-sata case connected to a PCIe 1x SATA
controller with SIL 3132 chip. The case can contain up to 5 HDDs and be
operated as various RAID levels or as a plain SATA port multiplier.

I found several websites that state the case contains a JMicron JMB393
[2] port multiplier, but i have not yet disassembled the case completely
to prove it.

I am running a Gentoo Linux with an openVZ kernel (based on vanilla
2.6.32.15, openVZ version is budarin.1), i compiled smartmontools from
svn-trunk revision 3156.

My problem is, that with four of the ports smartctl does show meaningful
output incl. error logs and SMART attributes, but in the fifth case it
does not. If i number the hdd slots from top to buttom from 1 to 5, it
is port 3 that does not give meaningful smart data.

This problem occurres in several of this cases with a different hdd
types. All hdds work if directly attached to a sata port or if used in
another slot as slot 3. I tested e.g. Western Digital WD15EADS-00R6B0
and SAMSUNG HD154UI hdds. I attacked the defect output to this email.

If you say this problem is out of your scope and a problem of the
hardware vendor, i am ok with it but if you want to find and solve this
problem, i can setup a separate linux box with root access for debugging
this issue. (dedicated hardware, not openvz).

Thank you in advance.

Greets,
Dennis Birkholz


[1] Lian Li EX-50:
http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=331&cl_index=12&sc_index=42&ss_index=115&g=f
[2] JMicron SMB393: http://www.jmicron.com/Product_JMB393.htm