I recently ran into this, too. Because the Asus-Phison SSD drives incorrectly report that SMART is not supported, smartctl normally aborts without actually trying to enable SMART -- but you can indeed force it to try using the -T permissive
option:
# smartctl -s on /dev/sda
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-3.2.0-23-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
SMART support is: Unavailable - device lacks SMART capability.
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
# smartctl -T permissive -s on /dev/sda
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-3.2.0-23-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
SMART support is: Unavailable - device lacks SMART capability.
=== START OF ENABLE/DISABLE COMMANDS SECTION ===
SMART Enabled.
# smartctl -T permissive -a /dev/sda
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-3.2.0-23-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: ASUS-PHISON OB SSD
Serial Number: OS6Q85000208432
Firmware Version: TST2.04P
User Capacity: 4,034,838,528 bytes [4.03 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: 5
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Mon May 20 19:26:06 2013 EDT
SMART support is: Unavailable - device lacks SMART capability.
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0xff) Offline data collection activity
[...]
(At least this worked with both the 4GB and the 16GB ASUS-PHISON SSD drives found in my Eee PC 900.)
I assume the poster of the Sept 2008 smartmontools-database list message had to use -T permissive
to get the output shown there; too bad he didn't mention that fact in the post....
Thanks but this did not work:
– please delete me – 2012-10-02T12:59:19.577SMART support is: Unavailable - device lacks SMART capability. A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
I also read "ASUS 901 doesn't have s.m.a.r.t. tech since it uses pata instead of sata" (http://forum.eeeuser.com/index.php?/topic/82739-how-to-check-ssd-health/).SMART works across parallel ATA just fine in general, but if the SSD refuses to support it, then yeah, it's not going to work. If it were me, I'd hang the SSD off another machine and try enabling SMART on it there, then (if it worked) see whether the setting persisted once the drive was reinstalled in the Eee. Other than that, I'm not sure what to suggest. – Aaron Miller – 2012-10-02T13:09:55.747
OK thanks. I'll post another topic to see if this is really most likely the hard drive, before undertaking this more complicated route... – please delete me – 2012-10-02T15:14:58.593