SATA drives and smartmontools.

[Adam Funk]

On 2007-02-26, Carsten Aulbert wrote:

> Have you tried using the libata directly (with a kernel version 2.6.15
> or newer)?
>
> smartctl -a -data /dev/sda
> should usually work fine without the legacy mode.

That command produces a whole lot of information about SMART
capabilities, which I thought looked encouraging, but:

! ROOT ! /home/adam # smartctl -s on -d ata /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

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


! ROOT ! /home/adam # /etc/init.d/smartmontools restart
 * Restarting S.M.A.R.T. daemon...                                              [fail] 

! ROOT ! /home/adam # tail /var/log/syslog
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Opened configuration file /etc/smartd.conf 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Drive: DEVICESCAN, implied '-a' Directive on line 22 of file /etc/smartd.conf 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Configuration file /etc/smartd.conf was parsed, found DEVICESCAN, scanning devices 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Device: /dev/hda, opened 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Device: /dev/hda, packet devices [this device CD/DVD] not SMART capable 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Device: /dev/hdb, opened 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Device: /dev/hdb, packet devices [this device CD/DVD] not SMART capable 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Device: /dev/sda, opened 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Device: /dev/sda, IE (SMART) not enabled, skip device Try 'smartctl -s on /dev/sda' to turn on SMART features 
Feb 26 14:59:59 bunsen smartd[23091]: Unable to monitor any SMART enabled devices. Try debug (-d) option. Exiting... 


I did notice this line in the `smartctl -a ...` output:

==> WARNING: May need -F samsung or -F samsung2 enabled; see manual for details.

but I get exactly the same results with either of those options added
to the smartctl command.