SMART over USB

[Ulrich Spoerlein]

On Thu, 07.02.2008 at 00:48:53 +0100, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
> 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.

Did you try with atausb(4)? Perhaps it's a limitation of our SCSI layer?

Cheers,
Ulrich Spoerlein
-- 
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool,
than to speak, and remove all doubt.