I have a very old 2.5 IDE drive inside a USB enclosure that gives some buffer I/O error. I tried to use smartctl to see what SMART says about it, but I can't manage to make it work. Being root, if I just write:#> smartctl --all /dev/sdesmartctl answers:/dev/sde: Unknown USB bridge [0x14cd:0x6600 (0x201)]Smartctl: please specify device type with the -d option.So I've tried every -d TYPE available in the help summary, and the best result is achieved with:#> smartctl --all -d scsi /dev/sdethat outputs:Vendor:               IC25N030Product:              ATMR04-0User Capacity:        30,005,821,440 bytes [30,0 GB]Logical block size:   512 bytesscsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0>> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode pageA mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.If I also add -T permissive the last line is replaced with:Error Counter logging not supportedDevice does not support Self Test loggingIt seems that just a few models of USB enclosures are officially supported by smartmontools. Is there something that I'm missing or simply the device implements an archaic version of SMART without any counters (and hence almost useless)?
smartctl on external hdd inside ide-to-usb enclosure
usb drive;external hdd;ide;smartctl
There is a vendor independent SAT (SCSI/ATA transfer) standard, but AFAIK this is not widely supported on (cheaper) bridges. There are several vendor specific ATA pass-through commands that you can select with smartctl with the -d option:-d TYPE, --device=TYPE    Specify device type to one of: ata, scsi, sat[,N][+TYPE],     usbcypress[,X], usbjmicron[,x][,N], usbsunplus, marvell,     areca,N, 3ware,N, hpt,L/M/N, megaraid,N, cciss,N, auto, testwhere -d sat is for SAT compatible devices.The USB Device Support lists devices and their commandline options, so if you get a USB controller with one of the devices listed there as supported, you have a better change of getting things to work.