Dumb (or not SMART) SAS Drives...

raz0r11

Cadet
Joined
Jun 8, 2021
Messages
3
Long time reader. First time poster.

So I'm hoping someone can help explain something I find a bit confusing.

Based on threads read here, SAS drives don't show extended SMART attributes even though each device claims to be SMART capable.
Someone here hypothesized it was due to SCSI & ATA protocol differences which might be true. Need to RTFM on that...

Anyway if you can't report extended attributes...

What's the point of running any SMART tests on a SAS drive?

Further, how do you know you can actually trust what's been reported if unable to inspect?

Bonus points to anyone that has a pre-built parallel background test script. I mean sure could launch a bunch of tmux sessions but nicer to have something already automated. Seen a few half working or non-functional ones due to dependencies (bht & disk-burnin come to mind). Trying to not reinvent the wheel.
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
What's the point of running any SMART tests on a SAS drive?

Because some SAS drives sorta implement SMART, and smartmon can also make some sense out of some other SCSI-specific things.

Bonus points to anyone that has a pre-built parallel background test script. I mean sure could launch a bunch of tmux sessions but nicer to have something already automated. Seen a few half working or non-functional ones due to dependencies (bht & disk-burnin come to mind). Trying to not reinvent the wheel.

If you're just looking for something to reliably test an array, perhaps solnet-array-test-v2? It isn't doing anything with SMART, since it comes from the 1990's, and it's really designed for interactive use, but it's very hackable...
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
What's the point of running any SMART tests on a SAS drive?

Further, how do you know you can actually trust what's been reported if unable to inspect?
It's really just hope that a warning message pops up before the drive dies but to be honest, not all drives will throw a SMART failure before they die. For example when you power on your system and the drive motor fails to spin, you will not see that failure coming. It's not the most common failure but if you power the drives up/down frequently, it's a good possibility it could happen. So it's better to have some SMART results if you can get them than none at all.
 
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