Getting SMART data from an external HD ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter maxx
  • Start date Start date
M

maxx

Has anyone been able to get S.M.A.R.T. information from a drive in an
external USB 2.0 enclosure?

tnx,
maxx
 
maxx said:
Has anyone been able to get S.M.A.R.T. information from a drive in an
external USB 2.0 enclosure?

tnx,
maxx
Click to expand...
If the drive maker doesn't have a utility on thier website to do this, and
its just a one-off check you want to do, you could always take the drive out
of the case and hook it up to an ordinary machine (assuming it has a
standard 40 pin PATA connector) - not sure if this would void the warranty
though. Why do you need this info?

Paul
 
I have this HD (SMART capable) in an external USB case, and I want to
keep it monitored - it's not a one-off check, I wish to have it under
constant SMART monitoring

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 11:18:18 +0100, "Paul Murphy" >If the drive maker
doesn't have a utility on thier website to do this, and
 
In message <[email protected]> "Paul
Murphy said:
If the drive maker doesn't have a utility on thier website to do this, and
its just a one-off check you want to do, you could always take the drive out
of the case and hook it up to an ordinary machine (assuming it has a
standard 40 pin PATA connector) - not sure if this would void the warranty
though. Why do you need this info?
Click to expand...

The whole point of SMART, in theory, is to know if a drive is going to
fail BEFORE it fails.

A one-off check probably wouldn't be useful in this situation.
 
DevilsPGD said:
In message <[email protected]> "Paul


The whole point of SMART, in theory, is to know if a drive is going to
fail BEFORE it fails.

A one-off check probably wouldn't be useful in this situation.
Click to expand...
Depends whether the OP suspects something might have gone wrong with it,
even though it appears to be working fine e.g. it sounds different (in order
to make a warranty claim etc). I agree that the whole point of smart is to
detect/indicate impending failure - sometimes depending on the drive though,
it can be way off track. When I worked as a computer tech for a school we
had 7 or 8 "smart triggered" machines in one of the classrooms with 30
machines in it. The smart flagging criteria were obviously set to
stringently and these drives kept going fine the whole time I was there
(over 15 months), we just disabled smart detection in the motherboard BIOS.
We could afford to adopt a wait and see approach because all the kids' work
was saved onto the network server (which was a regularly backed up RAID 5
machine) and we used imaging software and had spare drives in the supplies
cupboard.

Since the smart signalling/trigger indication would need to travel through
the ATA -> USB 2.0 bridge to get into the machine, perhaps the
enclosure/connector manufacturer may have a clue. It would also be worth
researching whether any external drive manufacturers (who supply the drive
already in a box -e.g. Maxtor) have a readymade solution for this.

Paul
 
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