Hi Debianites,

I have just installed smartmontools on my Lenny box and am using smartd
to monitor two SATA IDE drives. I've read on the web that the right
option to use for such a drive is "-d ata" to force smartd to treat it
as an ATA drive. On the other hand, when starting smartd without any -d
switch for the two drives in smartd.conf, smartd reported that it is
automatically using "-d sat" for ATA disk behind SAT layer.

smartd does not complain with either, -d sat or -d ata. The only
difference is that, in the first case, it reports to be monitoring two
SCSI drives, while in the latter it says they're ATA drives.

So I'm a bit confused about which of the two switches, sat or ata, is
the correct one to use. Or maybe it doesn't matter. Any pointers are
appreciated.

Cheers,
Norbert


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2009/3/13 Norbert Zeh <nzeh@cs.dal.ca>:
> Hi Debianites,
>
> I have just installed smartmontools on my Lenny box and am using smartd
> to monitor two SATA IDE drives. *I've read on the web that the right
> option to use for such a drive is "-d ata" to force smartd to treat it
> as an ATA drive. *On the other hand, when starting smartd without any -d
> switch for the two drives in smartd.conf, smartd reported that it is
> automatically using "-d sat" for ATA disk behind SAT layer.
>
> smartd does not complain with either, -d sat or -d ata. *The only
> difference is that, in the first case, it reports to be monitoring two
> SCSI drives, while in the latter it says they're ATA drives.
>
> So I'm a bit confused about which of the two switches, sat or ata, is
> the correct one to use. *Or maybe it doesn't matter. *Any pointers are
> appreciated.

SATA drives are ATA drives on a serial interface.
-d ata is correct. I haven't heard of, or any experience with -d sat.

Adrian

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<erno> hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to
ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my
apartment it is.


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Adrian Levi wrote at 2009-03-12 18:55 -0600:
> 2009/3/13 Norbert Zeh <nzeh@cs.dal.ca>:
> > smartd does not complain with either, -d sat or -d ata. *The only
> > difference is that, in the first case, it reports to be monitoring two
> > SCSI drives, while in the latter it says they're ATA drives.
> >
> > So I'm a bit confused about which of the two switches, sat or ata, is
> > the correct one to use. *Or maybe it doesn't matter. *Any pointers are
> > appreciated.
>
> SATA drives are ATA drives on a serial interface.
> -d ata is correct. I haven't heard of, or any experience with -d sat.

And the smartctl(8) man page says '-d ata' (at least when using libata):
For SATA disks accessed with libata, use "/dev/sd[a-z]" and append "-d ata".

Thanks, guys. Just wanted to make sure.

-N


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