Notes about open source software, computers, other stuff.

Getting SMART information from a Seagate Expansion Portable drive

A couple of days ago, I bought myself a 5TB Seagate Expansion Portable drive. This is an 2.5″ external spinning hard disk that connects over USB. In a review on a well-known Dutch website for IT enthusiasts, I read that inside, the drive consists of an ST5000LM000 hard drive and a USB to SATA chip (in contrast to other manufacturers like WD that solder the USB connector directly on the drives circuit board).

After connecting the drive to my computer (that currently runs Ubuntu 21.10), I wanted to see what I could learn about the drive in terms of SMART information. So I tried:

$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.13.0-41-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Read Device Identity failed: scsi error unsupported field in scsi command

A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.

Trying the suggested -T option didn’t help. So I played around with the -d option that I had used before trying to connect to hard drives behind RAID controllers. That looked better:

$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda -T conservative -d sat,auto
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.13.0-41-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:               Seagate
Product:              Expansion HDD
Revision:             1901
Compliance:           SPC-4
User Capacity:        5.000.981.077.504 bytes [5,00 TB]
Logical block size:   512 bytes
Physical block size:  4096 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Logical Unit id:      0x3e41434334313346
Serial number:        00000000NACC413F
Device type:          disk
Local Time is:        Thu May 19 21:54:04 2022 CEST
SMART support is:     Unavailable - device lacks SMART capability.

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
Current Drive Temperature:     0 C
Drive Trip Temperature:        0 C

Error Counter logging not supported

No Self-tests have been logged

The drive reports the correct size, but also says there is not SMART support. In fact, using -d scsi gave identical output. Because there should only be this USB to SATA translation layer I thought that somehow I should be able to get the SMART commands to work. Looking through the smartmontools website, I came across this article that explains the “SAT with UAS” situation. It seems that the high speed UAS driver disables SAT transfers in certain cases. The workaround is to tell the kernel to use the older usb-storage driver instead of the uas driver. With the lsusb command I identified the manufacturer and device ID of the drive:

$ lsusb | grep -i seagate
Bus 004 Device 012: ID 0bc2:2037 Seagate RSS LLC Expansion HDD

Next, I made sure to unmount and disconnect the drive and then instructed the kernel to use the old driver for this device:

$ echo "0x0bc2:0x2037:u" | sudo tee /sys/module/usb_storage/parameters/quirks

and reconnected the drive. I verified in the kernel logs that the usb-storage driver was indeed used:

mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb 4-3.3: new SuperSpeed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas mtp-probe[983206]: checking bus 4, device 12: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:0c:00.3/usb4/4-3/4-3.3"
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas mtp-probe[983206]: bus: 4, device: 12 was not an MTP device
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb 4-3.3: New USB device found, idVendor=0bc2, idProduct=2037, bcdDevice=19.01
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb 4-3.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb 4-3.3: Product: Expansion HDD
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb 4-3.3: Manufacturer: Seagate
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb 4-3.3: SerialNumber: 00000000NACC413F
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb 4-3.3: UAS is ignored for this device, using usb-storage instead
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb-storage 4-3.3:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: usb-storage 4-3.3:1.0: Quirks match for vid 0bc2 pid 2037: 800000
mei 19 22:08:30 barabas kernel: scsi host6: usb-storage 4-3.3:1.0

Notice the “UAS is ignored” message. And lo and behold, smartctl now works and shows all relevant information:

$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.13.0-41-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 2.5 5400
Device Model:     ST5000LM000-2U8170
Serial Number:    WCJ6AG24
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 0e0939684
Firmware Version: 0001
User Capacity:    5.000.981.078.016 bytes [5,00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
Form Factor:      2.5 inches
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Thu May 19 22:30:52 2022 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)	Offline data collection activity
					was never started.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)	The previous self-test routine completed
					without error or no self-test has ever
					been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: 		(    0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x71) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					No Auto Offline data collection support.
					Suspend Offline collection upon new
					command.
					No Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					Conveyance Self-test supported.
					Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
					power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 ( 827) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
SCT capabilities: 	       (0x7035)	SCT Status supported.
					SCT Feature Control supported.
					SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   067   065   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       5367808
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       10
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   100   253   045    Pre-fail  Always       -       3765
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0 (86 255 0)
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       9
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   069   069   040    Old_age   Always       -       31 (Min/Max 29/31)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       23
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   031   040   000    Old_age   Always       -       31 (0 19 0 0 0)
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0 (7 164 0)
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       1723222
242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       3644586

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

Now that I know how to do this, let’s undo the “use usb-storage driver instead of the uas driver” (alternatively, a reboot should also work, but who wants that?):

$ echo "" | sudo tee /sys/module/usb_storage/parameters/quirks

I will use this drive as a backup drive while I am travelling, so the aim of this post is not only to inform you as my reader(s), but also to remind my future self of how I did this. Now I only need to remember to check the SMART values every once in a while :-).

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10 Comments

  1. poku

    Thanks for this article. This quickly solved the problem for me. I like the amount of detail and the mention of rather deleting the quirk after getting the stats.

  2. Pau Sort

    Sorry, noob question here: May I ask the use of 0x0bc2:0x2037:u? The “u” what does it mean?

    • LCK

      Dear Pau,
      Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I had to look it up, but in the “Additional Information” section of one the articles mentioned in the text (https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/SAT-with-UAS-Linux) use of :u is explained. It means “IGNORE_UAS”, so it basically tells the kernel not to use UAS for this device.

  3. Hajo

    Hi. Tried to do it as described. No success. The Seagate expansion 4TB has still Smart disabled. Any idea?

    • LCK

      Hi Hajo,
      I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work for you. Where did it fail? Were there any error messages?

  4. AhnFire

    Wow, this totally worked also on Debian 12 (Bookworm) as well! Now my OMV can also access the SMART data and I can run useful scheduled tests. Thanks!

  5. AhnFire

    Interestingly, after reboot, I can’t get it back. I see there is a way to report a new drive to be added to the smartmontools DB. When I get a chance, I will try and report the info there so it is added permanently. I have a Seagate Expansion 8TB I am using in MergerFS as a data drive.

  6. AhnFire

    Finally, I made the flag permanent by using the grub-update method as listed here: https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/SAT-with-UAS-Linux#PermanentFlagSettings

    Hope this helps someone!

    • LCK

      Glad this post helped you, AhnFire! And thanks for the follow-up replies. Indeed: hope this helps someone!

  7. ankur saxena

    Hi LCK – thank you for much for this article, I wasted 2 days of my time to figure out why the smart ctl was not working on my Seagate drive, and finally caem across your article. It is very elaborate and helped me fix my issue w mu Ubuntu + 5TB drive – thank you very much

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