How do you monitor SSD wear in Windows when the drives are presented as 'generic' devices?

Question

Under Linux, we can monitor SSD wear fairly easily with smartmontools whether the drive is presented as a normal block device or a generic device (which happens when the drive has been hardware RAIDed by certain controllers such as the one on the IBM HS22).

How can we do the equivalent under Windows? Does anyone actually use smartmontools? Or are there other packages out there?

The problem is that SCSI Generic devices just don't show up in Windows. If the drives aren't RAIDed we can see them fine.

How I'd do it in Linux:

sles11-live:~ # lsscsi -g
[1:0:0:0]    disk    SMART    USB-IBM          8989  /dev/sda   /dev/sg0
[2:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      MTFDDAK256MAR-1K MA44  -          /dev/sg1
[2:0:1:0]    disk    ATA      MTFDDAK256MAR-1K MA44  -          /dev/sg2
[2:1:8:0]    disk    LSILOGIC Logical Volume   3000  /dev/sdb   /dev/sg3

sles11-live:~ # smartctl -l ssd /dev/sg1
smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-2.6.32.49-0.3-default] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Device Statistics (GP Log 0x04)
Page Offset Size         Value  Description
  7  =====  =                =  == Solid State Device Statistics (rev 1) ==
  7  0x008  1               26~ Percentage Used Endurance Indicator
                              |_ ~ normalized value

sles11-live:~ # smartctl -l ssd /dev/sg2
smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-2.6.32.49-0.3-default] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Device Statistics (GP Log 0x04)
Page Offset Size         Value  Description
  7  =====  =                =  == Solid State Device Statistics (rev 1) ==
  7  0x008  1                3~ Percentage Used Endurance Indicator
                              |_ ~ normalized value

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 10 '12 at 00:18

3

You need a utility provided by your raid controller. For example, most HP raid controllers have a compatible utility for reading the smart info from drives connected to their controllers.

answered May 10 '12 at 00:18

longneck

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Ultimately, looks like this is what it comes down to. I was hoping Windows could be convinced to expose 'Generic' devices in a similar way. – MikeyB May 17 '12 at 14:59
Similar? I dont see how Linux looks THROUGH the Raid controller - in your example it definitely does not look like that. Comparing apples to oranges, are we not? – TomTom Jul 06 '12 at 19:55
This particular RAID controller (the LSI 1064e) exposes the physical drives behind it to the host OS via Generic SCSI devices. – MikeyB Jul 06 '12 at 21:02
3

@TomTom Also, just because you don't see it doesn't mean it can't happen. smartmontools can look through the RAID controller and query the disks behind it for these values as I do [here](http://serverfault.com/a/515843/2101) – MikeyB Jun 14 '13 at 13:54

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 06 '12 at 19:43

Specifically for IBM servers, there is now a utility available to monitor this:

IBM SSD Wear Gauge CLI Utility v1.0 (Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 2008) - IBM BladeCenter and System x

and

IBM SSD Wear Gauge CLI Utility v1.0 (Linux) - IBM BladeCenter and System x

How do you monitor SSD wear in Windows when the drives are presented as 'generic' devices?

2 Answers2