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No S.M.A.R.T data from WD My Book 1230 USB device


hmishra

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Hi,

 

I have total of 5 WD My Book 1230 USB 3.0 external HDDs, and 3 of them don't display S.M.A.R.T data through Stablebit Scanner, even after turning on the "UnsafeDirectIo" on Scanner.Service.exe.config file and restarting Scanner service. Heck, I even rebooted the machine after turning on this entry just to make sure it was not user error.

 

To make sure that S.M.A.R.T data was available, I used DirectIOTest utility and it correctly displays S.M.A.R.T attributes after turning on the "Unsafe Direct I/O" option. The screen prints are as below as well as the screen print from Scanner not displaying the temperature data which is one of the attributes.

 

Just to make sure that S.M.A.R.T data was available to other utilities, I also accessed those attributes using CrystalDiskInfo and indeed they were. Screen Print attached in subsequent posts due to image upload size limit.

 

Please suggest how to fix the issue.

 

Thanks,

Hiranmoy

 

BTW, please ignore drives M: and L: on the Scanner screen print since it seems to be a issue with a particular multi disk USB enclosure and even DirectIOTest or CrystalDiskInfo cannot pull the S.M.A.R.T info for those 2 drives.

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Apparently I can only upload one screen print from CrystalDiskInfo due to upload restriction but I think you will get the idea.

 

The rest of the screen prints are similar for other drives. Oh, yes....Just thinking ahead, I also took the trouble of upgrading to latest Scanner v 2.5.0.3041 BETA

 

 and tried to launch the service after turning on "UnsafeDirectIo", but in this case the service wouldn't even launch after displaying an error msg about incompatibility with some settings.

 

-Hiranmoy

post-1646-0-08528300-1405008450_thumb.jpg

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If that is the case, then you must enable the "UnsafeDirectIO" setting in StableBit Scanner.

 

To do so, use the following guide:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings

 

Or use this file:

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

 

 

Once you've created the file (or downloaded the linked one) and placed it in the correct folder, restart the StableBit Scanner service (run "services.msc" and find "StableBit Scanner Service" and restart it). Or restart the system.

 

Once you've done that, it should grab the SMART data for the disks in question.

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If that is the case, then you must enable the "UnsafeDirectIO" setting in StableBit Scanner.

 

To do so, use the following guide:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings

 

Or use this file:

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

 

 

Once you've created the file (or downloaded the linked one) and placed it in the correct folder, restart the StableBit Scanner service (run "services.msc" and find "StableBit Scanner Service" and restart it). Or restart the system.

 

Once you've done that, it should grab the SMART data for the disks in question.

Hi Christopher,

 

Thanks for your quick response as usual.

 

Which version of Scanner should I use, the release version or latest BETA? The reason I ask is, the config file you has linked for download seems to be @ 10 times larger than the version that came with the release version I installed.

 

Thanks,

Hiranmoy

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It should work with any version, actually. 

 

if there is a setting that isn't present in the version, it should just ignore it. 

 

So the choice is up to you. But the beta version has a LOT of changes over the release version:

http://blog.covecube.com/2014/07/stablebit-scanner-2-5-0-3041-beta-drive-reliability/

http://blog.covecube.com/2013/11/stablebit-scanner-2-5-0-2968-beta-notifications/

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Hmmmm....That didn't seem to do the trick. I have the Scanner service (BETA version) running with the downloaded config file i.e. restarted the Stablebit service after placing the downloaded file but I still don't see SMART data for the 3 My Book USB drives. What else can I do?

 

Thanks.

 

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Are you using my file?

If so, make sure that it's placed in "C:\Program Files (x86)\StableBit\Scanner\"

 

 

And either way, make sure it's named "Scanner.Service.exe.confg".

 

Aside from that, it should work. I'd recommend rebooting the server in that case.

And if that doesn't help, we could set up a remote support sessions, so I can see about getting it working. If you're interested in that, let me know.

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Christopher,

 

As it turns out, I had followed the instructions exactly as needed but it didn't help. I was about to take up your offer of remote assistance when, purely by coincidence, I noticed that I had initially incorrectly added those disks to Windows as MBRs instead of GPTs since they were all more than 2 TBs in size. So, while Windows didn't complain, pulling SMART data was an issue. The interesting thing was, despite having added the disks as MBRs, Windows still reported the full capacity of the disks, not just restricted to 2 TBs.

 

Once I corrected the issue by converting the disks into GPTs, turns out I didn't even need "UnsafeDirectIO" setting to be enabled. The issue is now resolved and may serve as a use case of yet another thing to look at why someone else cannot pull SMART data.

 

-Hiranmoy

 

 

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Well, that is very odd indeed.

 

However, you are using the 2.4 (release) version of StableBit Scanner, correct?

If so, I do believe that there was some significant changes to the disk identification and SMART data code. So using the beta may have helped out in this case. 

Either way, that is definitely odd behavior.

 

As for the partition size, if the disks are advanced format, they can in theory support larger than 2TB partitions with MBR.

Also, what USB controller was in use here (or the motherboard in question)?

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Actually, I ended up using the latest 2.5.0.3041 BETA, so even that didn't help.

 

I am using this USB controller card http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FPIMJEW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 which has FL1100 chipset, if that is what you meant to ask.

 

As for the MB, it is an off the shelf Dell XPS Studio 8100 for what it is worth.

 

As for the disks being advanced format (4K sector size), I think I have read somewhere not too long ago that external USB HDDs in particular, do some kind of sector size trick to maintain wider compatibility which would probably explain why Windows didn't complain about the larger disk size despite being mounted as MBR. Anyway, not too sure about this topic. All I can say is, they are the off the shelf, WD My Book external USB 3.0 HDDs connected to my Windows 7 pc via usb 3.0 hubs...One of them 3 TB and other 2 were 4 TBs.

 

-Hiranmoy

 

,

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MB, it is an off the shelf Dell XPS Studio 8100 for what it is worth.

 

As for the disks being advanced format (4K sector size), I think I have read somewhere not too long ago that external USB HDDs in particular, do some kind of sector size trick to maintain wider compatibility which would probably explain why Windows didn't complain about the larger disk size despite being mounted as MBR. Anyway, not too sure about this topic. All I can say is, they are the off the shelf, WD My Book external USB 3.0 HDDs connected to my Windows 7 pc via usb 3.0 hubs...One of them 3 TB and other 2 were 4 TBs.

 

-Hiranmoy

 

,

Your 100% correct, these drives (enclosures) have funky controllers in them,  if you pulled a 3 or 4tb drive from the enclosure, you'll see that there are multiple partitions on the drive, while connected to the controller, you only see one.  I've initialized 4 drives latest year, 2 4TB hitachi, 1 4TB seagate, and 1 3 TB WD,  all drives after  creating a single partition, GPT, format,  etc, running scanner, while connected via usb 3, stressing the drives before pulling them from the case, but when connected via a sata I had any where from 3-5 separate partitions.  

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  • 1 year later...

Anybody found a way to get SMART data out of these drives? I have a 4TB "WD My Book 1230 USB Device".

I have NoWmi and Unsafe DirectIO options enabled, running version 2.5.2.3100 Beta.

 

Note: BitFlock is able to read the SMART info from the disk: https://bitflock.com/A2JVAXTM(Drive F:)

 

Thank yo ufor grabbing the BitFlock info. I've submitted the issue to Alex, to take a look at.

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  • 5 months later...

I have two WD My Book 1230 external drives and Scanner couldn't read the S.M.A.R.T. data from either drive initially.

 

For both drives I changed the partition from MBR (factory default) to GPT (I had to copy off my data first), and after I did that for both drives Scanner was able to read the S.M.A.R.T. data without any issues.

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That's .... odd, to say the least.

 

Though, if this is related to the issue I think it is, then it may be a bug with the "IDENTIFY" command used to get drive information. We've recently found a serious bug with this, and have fixed it in the newest beta builds. However, repartitioning the drive may fix this.

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