Re: SATA disk smart or not?
On Friday 31 March 2006 10:00, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I get contradictory messages about smart enabled for my SATA
> WD800JD-60LUA0. Running Sarge BTW.
>
> When I do hdparm -I /dev/sda, I get:
>
> =========================================
> ATA device, with non-removable media
> Model Number: ST380011A
> Serial Number: 4JV6GCK4
> Firmware Revision: 8.01
> ...
> Commands/features:
> Enabled Supported:
> * READ BUFFER cmd
> * WRITE BUFFER cmd
> * Host Protected Area feature set
> * Look-ahead
> * Write cache
> * Power Management feature set
> Security Mode feature set
> * SMART feature set
> * FLUSH CACHE EXT command
> * Mandatory FLUSH CACHE command
> * Device Configuration Overlay feature set
> * 48-bit Address feature set
> SET MAX security extension
> * DOWNLOAD MICROCODE cmd
> * General Purpose Logging feature set
> * SMART self-test
> * SMART error logging
> =============================================
>
> But when I do smartctl -a /dev/sda, I get:
>
> =============================================
>
> Device: ATA WDC WD800JD-60LU Version: 07.0
> Serial number: WD-WMAMD4147178
> Device type: disk
> Local Time is: Fri Mar 31 10:44:33 2006 CST
> Device does not support SMART
>
> ==============================================
>
> So what is it? Hdparm says yes and smartctl says no.
>
> Any thoughts? That drive is brand new. I would be suprised if it did not
> support smart, but what do I know.
>
> H
According to a comment from "sensovision from WKey" on page
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983,
"Unfortunately right now official libata library in kernel doesn't support
ATA-passthrough calls and the only way to check SMART status right now is
to use patches like this:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/libata/
Here is the quote from developers of smartmontools:
"Smartmontools should work correctly with SATA drives under both Linux 2.4
and 2.6 kernels, if you use the standard IDE drivers in drivers/ide. If you
use the new libata drivers, it won't work correctly because libata doesn't
yet support the needed ATA-passthrough ioctl() calls. Jeff Garzik, the
libata developer, says that this support will be added to libata in the
future. When this happens, we'll add support to smartmontools for a new
SATA/libata device type '-d sata'. Typically, to force an SATA disk to run
using the standard (non-libata) drivers, you must use the BIOS to select
"legacy mode" for the controller. If the IDE driver doesn't support your
particular SATA controller, or the controller doesn't have a legacy
interface, then only libata can be used. Unless the hard disk controller on
the system motherboard is Intel, VIA or nVidia, standard IDE drivers may
not work
Note: an unofficial patch to libata that allows smartmontools to be used
with the standard '-d ata' device type was posted to the linux kernel
mailing list at the end of August 2004. The patch is included in the
libata-dev patchset that can be applied to a recent Linux kernel (>=
2.6.9). With a SATA disk driven by a libata driver, smartmontools can now
be used by specifying both the device type 'ata' and the SCSI device
corresponding to this disk, for example, smartctl -i -d ata /dev/sda. The
patch is still under development and it is probably best to make sure that
the disk is idle before trying smartmontools. "
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/#testinghelp
Hope this helps."
Note: comment copied verbatim.
The entire article is worth reading, but if you're attempting to use
smartctl, you probably know what you're doing.
Justin
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