SMART over USB

[Miroslav Lachman]

Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> Consider a PATA or SATA disk attached over USB.  AFAIK, the USB mass
> storage protocol is basically SCSI over USB.  Is there a way to access
> the disk's SMART data over SCSI / USB?  Perhaps as mode pages?  Has
> anyone tried this?
> 
> The reason I'm asking is this:
> 
> http://www.sharkoon.com/html/produkte/externe_gehaeuse/sata_quickport/index.html
> 
> This could be extremely useful to quickly extract SMART error logs from
> failing disks after you've replaced them, not to mention wipe them
> before RMAing them.  Unfortunately, it doesn't have an eSATA connector.

I tested many PATA/SATA to USB convertors and disc enclosures - none of 
them allowed access to SMART (under FreeBSD, nor Windows). Maybe it is 
I/O chip implementation problem.

Miroslav Lachman