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Any way to get SMART info on drives on SAS controllers?


dscline

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I have a bunch of drives on an IBM m1015 flashed to an LSI9211-8i in IT mode.  Stablebit can not read the SMART data on any of those drives.  But I know it's available, as it can be read in FlexRAID (which I believe uses smartctl) by specifying the SAT device type.  Is there any way to also pick this up in Stablebit?

 

Thanks!

 

EDIT:  I see there are some topics in the compatability forum regarding this.  I will work through those.

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That's very odd. My IMB m1115 reads the smart data just fine....  Also flashed to IT mode.

 

As for the way to enable it:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings

 

Set "UnsafeDirectIo" to "True" and restart.

Or use this file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0krodbweqz1rrc4/Scanner.Service.exe.config

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Thanks drashna, I saw that in the other threads, but at this time I'm a bit reluctant due to the "Methods that have been known to cause a system crash on a small percentage of machines ..." clause in those instructions. I might try it at a later time, but don't want to introduce too many new variables right now. From what I can tell, it's an "all or nothing" setting (you enable it if you have any drives that it can't read SMART values for).  With Smartmontools, I simply tell it specifically which drives to use SCSI to ATA Translation on, and it works. What exactly is "UnsafeDirectIo" doing?

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UnsafeDirectIo uses a number of methods that we have marked as "unsafe" because they can cause issues with the controller/drive/drivers, that can cause issues between causing the controller to restart, to blue screening the system. That is why they're "unsafe".  And while it may be a small percentage of systems and a small chance, since Scanner queries this information periodically, we'd rather use the methods that we know are safe.

 

 

This is from the guide on how to change the advanced settings, and is about the UnsafeDirectIo setting:

 

 

The Scanner supports different methods of communicating with the disk directly, it needs to do this to obtain SMART data and identification data and to issue commands to it that provide additional functionality. The access methods are grouped into 4 groups, Internal and External, and for each, Safe and Unsafe. Methods that have been known to cause a system crash on a small percentage of machines are categorized as Unsafe and are disabled by default. If the Scanner is having trouble talking to your disk directly, you can enable Unsafe mode to see if you get better results.

 

If you still have questions, please do ask.

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The methods used are SmartIoctl, ScsiMiniportClassDriver, ScsiMiniPortPortDriver, AtaPassThrough, ScsiPassthrough, ScsiPassthrough48, ScsiPassthroughSunplus, and ScsiPassthroughJmicron.

This list isn't comprehensive. But just the ones listed on my SSD by the "DirectIo test" utility of ours.  Many of these will work, but not all return the same data. And some drivers or controllers will respond badly to some of the commands used by the different methods. Hence the "unsafe" category.

 

Specifically, some of these other utilities either have better detection methods than we do, more experience.... or just don't care if it causes issues. A lot of them are one time utilities, so chances are it won't adversely affect your system. Scanner runs as a service and polls this information option, so stability is our TOP priority. We do not want to do anything that compromises your system's performance or stability. Well, not without your express permission first, at least.

 

 

However, I'm not exactly an expert at this part. This is much more technical, and I home that I'm accurate. And because I'm not certain, I've flagged this thread for Alex (the developer), so he can respond with a definitive answer for you.

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