S.M.A.R.T. Software Monitoring Problem

[Nick]

Dear all,

I've been trying to find a software to monitor my HDDs with S.M.A.R.T.
However, none of the softwares I tried can detect the S.M.A.R.T.
information. I tried:
- HDD Life
- HD Tune
- Sandra
- Lavalys
- PC Wizard...

My config is is follows:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte: GA-K8U-939
- SATA Controller: Silicon Image SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 Controller
- Windows XP Pro SP2

Sometimes the software detects the HDD, sometimes not. However, I can
never read the S.M.A.R.T. information.

Is there any good software that works out there ?

Thanks,

Nick,

 

[Arno Wagner]

Dear all,

I've been trying to find a software to monitor my HDDs with S.M.A.R.T.
However, none of the softwares I tried can detect the S.M.A.R.T.
information. I tried:
- HDD Life
- HD Tune
- Sandra
- Lavalys
- PC Wizard...

My config is is follows:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte: GA-K8U-939
- SATA Controller: Silicon Image SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 Controller
- Windows XP Pro SP2

Sometimes the software detects the HDD, sometimes not. However, I can
never read the S.M.A.R.T. information.

Is there any good software that works out there ?

The smartmontools. Ported over from Linux. Commandline,
which means you can script stuff. And free.

Arno

 

[Nick]

The smartmontools. Ported over from Linux. Commandline,
which means you can script stuff. And free.

Arno- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I tried those.. and they apparently also did not detect my HDDs or
SMART info.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I tried those.. and they apparently also did not detect my HDDs or
SMART info.

Then it is an OS issue. If the OS can access the disk, then the
smartmontools can report the status.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

Then it is an OS issue. If the OS can access the disk, then the
smartmontools can report the status.

Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe the OS remaps these disks as
SCSI disks? Then there is no interface functionality to
query SMART.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

And why should it if all else fails too. It's because of the same reason the others
can't either: missing support in the driver to pass S.M.A.R.T. command to the drive
and the S.M.A.R.T. data to the application.

Then it is an OS issue.

Babblebot, utterly clueless as always

If the OS can access the disk, then the
smartmontools can report the status.

Try again, you moron babblebot.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Hmm. Come to think of it,

Ow! Stop that immediately.

maybe the OS remaps these disks as SCSI disks?
Then there is no interface functionality to query SMART.

Still clueless, as always.

 

[Christian Franke]

Which error message does smartctl print?


No, OS uses sector level read/write access to logical drive.
But SMART support requires ATA pass through access to physical drive.

Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe the OS remaps these disks as
SCSI disks? ...

Yes, this is the case for Windows drivers of RAID capable controllers.
SCSI SMART and ATA SMART are not compatible.

... Then there is no interface functionality to
query SMART.

Not necessarily, ATA SMART ioctls are passed down to SCSI miniport.
But I don't know any driver (except 3ware) implementing this.

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/#FAQ-RAID
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/#FAQ-win-ata-as-scsi

Christian

 

[Arno Wagner]

Which error message does smartctl print?

No, OS uses sector level read/write access to logical drive.
But SMART support requires ATA pass through access to physical drive.

You are right, of course. I meant, "if the OS can squery the disk
metadata (serial, etc.) and it shows up as ATA disk...".

Yes, this is the case for Windows drivers of RAID capable controllers.
SCSI SMART and ATA SMART are not compatible.

I know.

Not necessarily, ATA SMART ioctls are passed down to SCSI miniport.
But I don't know any driver (except 3ware) implementing this.

I know one other: The Linux SATA layer treats SATA disks (and
in very new kernels also ATA disks, I think) as SCSI. There
is apparently an SCSI pass-through command for ATA commands,
but it is pretty new and likely not widely available. The Linux
kernel had it a few weeks after it was standardized, because the
developers had been waiting for it.

Arno