Monitor disks with the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring tools [LWN.net]

Monitor disks with the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring tools

Posted Mar 13, 2008 21:24 UTC (Thu) by malex (subscriber, #15692)
Parent article: Monitor disks with the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring tools

Unfortunately, smartmontools still can't provide the SMART test information from external USB
drives - one has to use manufacturer's MSWindows(TM) based Software to do that. It's a pity.
If that capability were present I wouldn't be sitting without current backups while I"m
waiting for a replacement drive to arrive.

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Monitor disks with the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring tools

Posted Mar 18, 2008 22:58 UTC (Tue) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]

This is not necessarily a problem with smartmontools. USB ATA passthrough is still new -- even Mark Lord, author of hdparm and a big contributer to ATA/IDE code in Linux, expressed suprise at finding an enclosure that actually supports it.

Some vendors (Cypress) have invented their own custom protocol for getting SMART data this way, and there has been some recent discussion about including support for it in smartmontools...

Monitor disks with the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring tools

Posted Mar 19, 2008 17:58 UTC (Wed) by malex (subscriber, #15692) [Link]

I've realized that in time and switched to using a combination of linux-supported eSATA card
and an eSATA enclosure. Now, SMART works, my backups are fast and I just don't care anymore
for USB2. smartmontools work great with my current setup.