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 Doctor FourMy other vehicle is a TARDISPremium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX | reply to koitsu
Re: eSATA CONTROLLER Interesting you mention that Silicon Image eSATA controllers have bugs in them. I may have encountered one with a drive I have connected through that interface. It is a Seagate ST31000340AS 1000GB drive (one of the ones that had the firmware bug in it - it was upgraded to SD1A when I sent it in for data recovery). It is connected through a Silicon Image SiL 3132 eSATA controller card I have on my PC, and is in a Venus DS3 external enclosure. When I look at the SMART data, it indicates the temperature is 61 deg. C. This cannot be right as the enclosure has an internal fan, and there is also an external fan blowing cool air onto it. When I took the drive out to check how hot it was, it was warm to the touch but not hot. I believe either the controller card or enclosure interface is improperly reporting some of the SMART data.
I am going to try it in another enclosure, and also internally as well to see if the temperature stays the same.
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"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
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 koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:14
1 edit | said by Doctor Four:... When I look at the SMART data, it indicates the temperature is 61 deg. C. This cannot be right as the enclosure has an internal fan, and there is also an external fan blowing cool air onto it. This would be a bug/quirk in either the software you're using to monitor SMART data, or a bug in the drive firmware. As much as I'd love to blame SilI controllers for this... 
Seagate has a history of changing the data format of their attributes stored in SMART. This is permitted within the ATA specification (thanks to loopholes/vagueness). This is one of the reasons utilities like smartmontools have an internal database of drive models/revisions, so the software can deal with said quirks.
FWIW, I had a single Western Digital drive many years ago which had the same problem. Turns out it was a firmware bug which was corrected silently (WD didn't even change the firmware version string after fixing it -- naughty!), as I found tons of forum posts online of other users reporting the same thing. My temperatures were off by about 20C. I simply did an RMA with WD (support folks thought I was crazy, until I showed them the evidence) and got a different drive -- same f/w revision, same model, but the problem was fixed.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. | |
Doctor FourMy other vehicle is a TARDISPremium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX | This drive was one that had stopped being accessible by the BIOS due to the SD15 firmware bug. I sent it to their data recovery company i365 to get free repair, and they replaced the controller card. My guess is that this is due to the SD1A firmware.
The odd thing about it was that yesterday I turned it off for a few hours to cool, then turned it on again. The temperature just after being turned on was 54 deg. C. It would seem to be about 30 degrees off.
--
"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
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