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Date:      Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:12:25 -0500
From:      Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
To:        Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org>
Cc:        Alexander Motin <mav@freebsd.org>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: RFC: ATA to CAM integration patch
Message-ID:  <20090629161225.GJ76275@dan.emsphone.com>
In-Reply-To: <4A48DCDF.9010104@samsco.org>
References:  <4A4517BE.9040504@FreeBSD.org> <200906271419.49329.pieter@degoeje.nl> <4A464EED.3070700@FreeBSD.org> <4A465F8C.4030901@samsco.org> <20090629105556.GB72094@acme.spoerlein.net> <4A48DCDF.9010104@samsco.org>

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In the last episode (Jun 29), Scott Long said:
> Ulrich Spörlein wrote:
> > On Sat, 27.06.2009 at 12:06:04 -0600, Scott Long wrote:
> >> Alexander Motin wrote:
> >>> This is not a problem. ATA disks does not have SCSI INQUIRY command. 
> >>> They use own IDENTIFY instead.  inquiry should work for ATAPI devices,
> >>> as they are SCSI deep inside.
> >> This is really the big missing piece in camcontrol; we need to add
> >> support for getting the IDENT info and getting/setting various
> >> attributes, as well as sending ATA commands over passthrough.
> > 
> > not sure if this is related, but I always wondered why tools like
> > smartctl never work with USB attached ATA disks.  Is it missing support
> > in our drivers and smartctl or is it simply impossible?
> 
> The possibility depends on several hardware and software factors.  If the
> USB disk enclosure was speaking ATA all the way up to the umass driver,
> then it could be possible to add some extra intelligence to the driver to
> make SMART work.  However, if the enclosure chip is speaking anything
> else, then probably not.  As an alternative, you might try to the ata-usb
> module instead and see if that works.

It also depends heavily on which USB bridge chip is in your external
enclosure.  See these links for a table of known good/bad enclosures:

http://smartmontools.wiki.sourceforge.net/USB 
http://smartmontools.wiki.sourceforge.net/overview_USB-Support
 
-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@allantgroup.com



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