Tool to inspect the SMART infos of USB harddiscs (not only of IDEs)

Is this possible at all?

Jeff

Tools from the manufacturer's websites will usually check SMART status.
Seagate also has an online scan, and I think you can do a generic scan of
other manufacturer's drives as well. Some of the other ones also have
generic tools, but the manufacturer ones will have more testing for their
own drives.

If you're looking for one that will monitor constantly or at power on, I
don't know if any, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

USB uses SCSI commands, which don't have IDE SMART features.

I was about to ask this same question. So, if SMART won't work on an
external drive, will the manufactures drive test programs do as good a
job as SMART in determining the health of the drive?

Today many of these just read the SMART status. That means they will
likely not work on external drives unless the USB interface was
made by the same manufactuere and they put in some vendor-specific
extensions that allow SMART pass-through.

Best option IMO: Remove the external drive from its case and connect it
internally to read smart status.

Arno

No that is not the case. The reason that the USB hard disks don't
"support SMART" is because many of the USB dongle chips have very poor
protocol conversion & drivers that don't translate the full
instruction set.

From the software perspective, a USB device makes the disk speak
"SCSI" instead of "ATA" instruction set, and their emulation is only
good enough to satisfy using the disk as a storage device, not to
support the type of diagnostic commands required to obtain and control
SMART.

The reason I wanted to use SMART was the new external drive I bought
makes noticable tick tick sounds as its seeking. Now, maybe most
drives do that anyway, but I haven't noticed such sounds since the
drives of about five years ago. Could be fan noise inside the case is
just drowning it out. I did return one of these drives, got a
replacement, and it does exactly the same thing. Sound normal?

You do know that IDE and SCSI SMART is different?

Arno

No. Really? Who would have thought that, eh?

Hey babblemouth, do you know David Lethe?

>
> Arno

Hi Folkert!

--
Joepie

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> Subject: Re: Tool to inspect the SMART infos of USB harddiscs (not only of IDEs)
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> "Arno Wagner" <me privacy.net> wrote in message news:3mrllsF17v9qqU2 individual.net
>> Previously David A.Lethe <david santools.com> wrote:
>> > On 20 Aug 2005 23:33:45 GMT, Arno Wagner <me privacy.net> wrote:
>> > > Previously Discordia <goaway you.net> wrote:

>> > > > > "Jeff Korn" under lycos.co.uk> wrote in message news:42ee9c4d$0$6990$9b4e6d93 newsread2.arcor-online.net...

>troll

<newbie instruction>

Don't be stupid. David is the president of a company that makes SMART
monitoring SW.
http://www.santools.com/companyinfo.html

</newbie instruction>

Can you translate IDE SMART to current SCSI SMART?

Yes, I know that. And at the moment IDE SMART cannot be passed through
SCSI commands. Although from the Linux SATA SMART page I conclude that
the commands for this have been standardised recently by the T10
comitee.

Arno