I have some hard drives where the SMART data is not forthcoming, and programs like Crystal Disk Info and HD Tune hang or crash when trying to read the data.

Trying to Google this out, I ran across the info that some RAID devices (like Drobos) somehow disable the SMART function in the hard drive for their own purposes (has something to do with drive timeouts when attempting internal error correction in RAID processing, I believe). This is on a drive-by-drive basis, and has nothing to do with the BIOS SMART enable/disable function.

My question is (for Windows) is there a program to turn it back on for an individual drive? (I believe Ubuntu has some such). It annoys me that I cannot look at a drive's SMART data to decide to replace it if it is failing.

Thanks for your help!

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Turning on/off SMART is in BIOS on motherboard.

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I have a similar situation, but I understand why it happens.

hooked up directly to my mobo, I have my 128gb SSD, and up until last week, a 500GB WD RE3 spare drive for my array. Those two's SMART data was readily available.

My RAID card has four 500gb drives on it, but Windows doesn't know there are four drives, since the card only reports the 1500gb array as one disk. However, the card itself has a web interface that shows some of the SMART data for each of the member disks.

Lastly, I have an eSATA enclosure that has a port-multiplier in it. There are five 1TB drives in it. None of the SMART data for those are available, probably due to the port multiplier. Interestingly, I can see the model number, serial number, and firmware revision for each of those disks, just not the SMART data. However, if I take any of those disks and plug them into the mobo directly, their SMART data is available.

Drives always have their SMART data, and always keep track of what's going on with themselves as long as they have power. It's just the ability to read that data which varies by how it is hooked up, or if the reading of the data is disabled or not.

I do remember older boards (back in the Socket A days) that would let you set SMART to [disabled]. Newer boards might still do it, too, but I don't know why you would want to do that. If the drive starts failing, most OSes these days have the ability to read the SMART data and see warnings and give you a notification that the drive is failing and that you should backup now and order a replacement drive. I've seen win7 do that before.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

But if the hard disk interface is on a hardware RAID controller, won't it be in the RAID BIOS?

(possibly integrated with the motherboard BIOS, but probably logically separate, whether or not the RAID controller is embedded or a distinct expansion card)

You guys are all wrong on this, I am sorry to say.

I had 3 x 1.5TB HD in a Drobo; when I took them out of the Drobo and hooked them up to the MB, I got no SMART info, that was the reason for the post. When Googling, I found references that Drobo (and at least some other RAID appliances/cards) somehow turned the internal drive SMART off so that normal programs that access SMART data could not. Again, as I said in my OP, this has nothing to do with the MB BIOS SMART setting.

So if they can turn SMART reporting off AT THE DRIVE LEVEL, there must be a way to turn it back on. THAT is what I am asking about.

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You guys are all wrong on this, I am sorry to say.

I had 3 x 1.5TB HD in a Drobo; when I took them out of the Drobo and hooked them up to the MB, I got no SMART info, that was the reason for the post. When Googling, I found references that Drobo (and at least some other RAID appliances/cards) somehow turned the internal drive SMART off so that normal programs that access SMART data could not. Again, as I said in my OP, this has nothing to do with the MB BIOS SMART setting.

So if they can turn SMART reporting off AT THE DRIVE LEVEL, there must be a way to turn it back on. THAT is what I am asking about.

Do you get the SMART data from any other drives connected to your system from the same controller?

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

smartmontools seems to have a command to enable or disable SMART. It also has some support for some RAID controllers and USB bridges.

Do you get the SMART data from any other drives connected to your system from the same controller?

Yes I do.

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smartmontools seems to have a command to enable or disable SMART. It also has some support for some RAID controllers and USB bridges.

That looks like what I am looking for...thank you!!!!!

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smartmontools seems to have a command to enable or disable SMART. It also has some support for some RAID controllers and USB bridges.

That looks like what I am looking for...thank you!!!!!

SIV (System Information Viewer)
http://rh-software.com/

Have [+SMART] [-SMART] buttons:




There are some mentions of "RAID" in SIV History:
http://rh-software.com/index_arc.html

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

How I missed smartmontools?!?!? smartmontools actually is written by Bruce Allen (Einstein@Home) and 2-3 other devs :)
http://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Team

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