Enabling S.M.A.R.T. on External Seagate through IBM BIOS

[gakirby]

Hi,

I recently purchased a 320gb Seagate drive and placed it an external usb enclosure to go along with my internal 100gb Toshiba. The toshiba arrived with S.M.A.R.T. enabled on the drive so I was able to monitor its health with programs such as NHC. My new Seagate however is capable of this technology, but arrived in with it disabled. In looking into how to enable this ability I came across the information about going into the BIOS of a computer, and finding the option to enable it. I have gone into the IBM BIOS (F1) many times however I can not seem to locate this option. I have searched on Google but have not been able to find any pertinent information.

Please help,

Greg Kirby

System Info:

IBM T42 2378-FVU
14.1" SXGA+ LCD
1.7Ghz Processor
1.5GB of RAM
100GB internal HDD
320GB external HDD
OS's: XP Pro, Debian Etch, Vista Beta

[christopher_wolf]

Welcome to the Thinkpad Forums

What are you using to look at the SMART attributes? Try it with HDTune and see if that works. There are some drives, and some utility programs for that matter, that won't support the reading of SMART attributes over a USB connection.

[gakirby]

Hi,

I am mainly looking to keep tabs on the drive temperature. I am aware that USB is not always supported however in all the programs I have tried, NHC, HDTune, HDDHealth, etc. the drive always shows up but they state S.M.A.R.T. attributes cannot be obtained because it is disabled. My main problem is just finding where in the BIOS I can enable this.

Thanks anyway for your help.

Greg Kirby

Just for more info....
The 320GB drive is this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148140
The enclosure is this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817145660

[christopher_wolf]

Hmmmm, I really don't think there is a way to enable the readout of SMART attributes across a USB cable simply via the BIOS; at least, in all the fiddling I have done with BIOS configs, I haven't seen a feature that does exactly that. It really isn't the BIOS's job to be able to emulate an IDE-like interface over USB to a UPnP mass storage device like a HDD in an external enclosure.

[gakirby]

Hmmmm, I really don't think there is a way to enable the readout of SMART attributes across a USB cable simply via the BIOS; at least, in all the fiddling I have done with BIOS configs, I haven't seen a feature that does exactly that.

Ya I have been searching all over the web for how to enable SMART attributes. All the site I have found say that it to be done in through the BIOS.... however IBM's BIOS behaves a little differently from other's manufactuer's BIOSs so I wasnt sure if someone had run into the problem already and found a solution.

[christopher_wolf]

Yes, but that depends on whether or not the drive itself can support it over USB. Have you tried the Seagate external on another computer, without an IBM BIOS, to see if that would work? My guess is that would probably not work.

[gakirby]

I will try that on my nearly 5 year old Gateway PC.... hopefully the motherboard supports SMART. I wont be able to do this for about a half hour so I will report back after I try.

[gakirby]

I tried it on my PC and with similar results. When I used HDTune on that computer I got the same results, that I am unsure of how to interpret. In HDTune if you go under the info tab there are a bunch of checkboxes at the bottom.... however when I select my external drive these "checks" turn into unchangeable green boxes. I am not sure how to interpret this but as I see it there are two possible issues. One being that the drive cannot correct transmit SMART attributes over USB. And the other being that SMART is disabled on the actual drive and needs to be enabled for these attributes to be read.

Greg Kirby

[christopher_wolf]

The filled in boxes mean that HDTune can't pickup the state of those SMART attributes, you should look at the list of attributes and their values and thresholds...that usually disappears when the checkboxes do that. Also, SMART isn't something that can be disabled, with any ease anyway, on a drive; in this case, the drive simply cannot send the SMART info over, or can't receive the query, properly. Same thing with just about all the USB external HDDs I have tried that on.