SMART with external USB drives

There is a way to get quirky (their term, not mine) USB devices to respond to SMART monitoring.

This most typically affects Seagate external/USB devices as the USB to SATA bidge they employ is a new-ish one that translates as a SCSI device not able to be fully monitored in current kernels.

The downside is you lose some advanced caching capability...note that I have not seen any real world impact on two (2) x 14TB external drives with this.

As always...YMMV.

1: SSH into your OMV device (as root or using sudo later)

2: type lsblk to confirm the dev/sdx device location

3: type smartctl --health /dev/sdx using the device you want to get the error code from.

--You wil see an error similar to /dev/sdd: Unknown USB bridge [0x0951:0x1666 (0x110)]

4. the important part are the 8 digits with a :(colon) in the middle not including "0x"; i.e. in the above portion the 0951:1666

5. Edit the /etc/modprobe.d/usb-storage-quirks.conf file to tell Debian/OMV to exclude that device from some checks it performs which end up blocking SMART

--- easiest way is to type echo "options usb-storage quirks=xxxx:xxxx:u" >> /etc/modprobe.d/usb-storage-quirks.conf

--Obviously replace the xxxx:xxxx with the code for YOUR device. using the ample above it would be echo "options usb-storage quirks=0951:1666:u" >> /etc/modprobe.d/usb-storage-quirks.conf

6. Update your root filesystem update-initramfs -u

You will have to reboot before this takes effect.

Note: If you want to add multiple devices to usb-storage-quirks.conf, it is done all on the one line, separated by comma. NOT MULTIPLE LINES.

I.E. options usb-storage quirks=0bc2:3322:u,0951:1666:u

This also occurs with some newer USB thum drives. You may be able to "solve" it the same way, but I've been less successful so far.

**Thanks to tkaiser and this thread How to get SMART on external drives