Microdrive ST68022CF not supported when working in ATA mode.

[wakaru00]

I am running a linux headless server on a 8GB microdrive.
(Seagate ST1.2 Series ST68022CF)
The drive is recognised as S.M.A.R.T capable by the computer BIOS.
When trying to run

smartctl -i /dev/sda

I get the following error

sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     ST68022CF
Serial Number:    3NX08T3P
Firmware Version: 3.01
User Capacity:    8,000,004,096 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   1
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Thu Nov 18 20:50:13 2010 GMT
SMART is only available in ATA Version 3 Revision 3 or greater.
We will try to proceed in spite of this.
SMART support is: Unavailable - Packet Interface Devices [this device: Write-once (optical disk)] don't support ATA SMART
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.

The same output with

smartctl -i /dev/sda -d ata

The following are the manufacturer's specifications for the unit, which I believe clearly confirm this drive supports S.M.A.R.T comands in ATA mode:
​http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/external/photo/100375652a.pdf

[Christian Franke]

Apparently the device does not provide ATA compatible IDENTIFY data:

• word 0 bit 15 is set (must be clear for ATA, set for ATAPI). This results in the misleading message "Packet Interface Devices ... don't support SMART" because smartctl does not yet handle the CF card specific values.
• word 80 (ATA major version number) is zero. This implies ATA-1 which did not support SMART.
• word 82 bit 0 (SMART feature set) is unset. This implies no SMART support.

Adding one or more -T permissive options might work to skip the SMART support check.

For further diagnostics please attach output of: smartctl -r ioctl,2 -T permissive -a /dev/sda
Please use smartmontools 5.40 or current SVN if possible.

[Christian Franke]

r3211 should fix the device detection for older CF microdrives. Please test if possible.

[wakaru00]

Replying to chrfranke:

For further diagnostics please attach output of: smartctl -r ioctl,2 -T permissive -a /dev/sda

There you have it:
​http://freespace.virgin.net/big.xuxo/output.txt

Please use smartmontools 5.40 or current SVN if possible.

I'm afraid I had to use v5.38 again as I've downloaded the source for 5.40 but I'm having trouble compiling it... (I'm quite new to linux O:))

~/tmp/smartmontools-5.40$ ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no
checking for g++... no
checking for c++... no
checking for gpp... no
checking for aCC... no
checking for CC... no
checking for cxx... no
checking for cc++... no
checking for cl.exe... no
checking for FCC... no
checking for KCC... no
checking for RCC... no
checking for xlC_r... no
checking for xlC... no
checking whether the C++ compiler works... no
configure: error: in `/home/xuxo/tmp/smartmontools-5.40':
configure: error: C++ compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details

config.log
​http://freespace.virgin.net/big.xuxo/config.log

r3211 should fix the device detection for older CF microdrives. Please test if possible.

Right, I will have a go, however as I said earlier I am quite new at Linux, so I think I may be out of my depth here O:)

[Christian Franke]

Replying to wakaru00:

There you have it: ...

The output shows that it works with 5.38 if -T permissive is specified.

Please note that this drive reports a failing SMART status and Seek_Error_Rate:

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.
See vendor-specific Attribute list for failed Attributes.
...
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
...
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   027   027   030    Pre-fail  Always   FAILING_NOW 14637250339102

configure: error: C++ compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details

The log suggests that g++ is missing. Distributions like Ubuntu do not install compilers by default.

[Christian Franke]

Replaying output.txt with current SVN (smartctl -a - < output.txt) shows that r3211 fixes the device type detection. No extra option is required then.

[Christian Franke]

r3211.