Bulkhead

OK - I found the issue (for me). MS Virus & Threat Protection has prevented Scanner from seeing the drives attached to my HBA.   At this point I don't even know if any of the Scanner settings changes, including the one documented above, made any difference. I have seen the impact real-time protection has on even my new, pretty robust pc, and have made a habit of disabling the real-time protection. Windows, inexplicably, occasionally re-enables the feature. The result has been that when I made changes that may have resolved the issue with Scanner seeing SMART data on my drives, Windows has prevented me from seeing the correct result because it had re-enabled the real-time protection without my knowledge..   Anyway,  in the image below you can see that Win has blocked the scanner service executable. I have add it, as well as the .native Scanner service, to the list of excluded programs and can confirm it has solved the issue following a reboot of my machine upon which Windows automatically re-enables real-time virus protection. I am now seeing all information on the drives on the HBA as I should.   For the record my system is currently:  OS Name    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Version    10.0.19041 Build 19041   Thanks to Spider99 for hanging in with me!