I'm testing SMART support on some Compact Flash cards.  After running smartctl -A on my card I'm getting the output below (also available here: http://pastebin.com/BX8GcLCX).  The UPDATED column says offline, does anyone know exactly what that means? UPDATE - it means the data is only collected offline.Also all the values seem to be at their defaults of 100 (except powercycle count).  Does anyone know how to get the card to report it's values?  The card I'm testing is an ATP AF1GCFI.Additionally if I try and run an offline test with smartctl --test=short /dev/sda I get back Warning: device does not support Self-Test functions.  Given the fact that the parameters can only be reported offline, does this mean I can't get any SMART data at all?=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE     1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0     2 Throughput_Performance  0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0     5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0     7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0     8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0   12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       358 195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0 197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
Understanding smartctl output for a CF card
flash memory;smart
Most of the standard fields for SMART data were defined with only rotational, magnetic harddrives in mind. None of these really appear appropriate for your CF card.Vendors are able to define their own attributes as well and those are not standardized. smartmontools is distributed a database (it's stored /var/lib/smartmontools/drivedb/drivedb.h on my debian machine.) that defines custom/special/overrides for different model harddrives. You'll probably have to input details for your CF card into such a database.If you look at the atpinc.com website, you'll see that you can email their sales team to request a copy of the specifications. The specifications document should list which SMART attributes the device supports, what they're representing, and how to interpret them.Also, you'll get more SMART information if you use -a instead of -A. You can force an offline selftest by using smartctl -t offline /dev/XXX and the device may support automatic, periodic offline testing with smartctl -o on /dev/XXX.You can run an offline selftest (any of the selftests, actually) while using the drive. Performance may be impacted, but you wont break anything.Email ATP and ask em for the docs.Good luck.