Posts tagged with "smart"

Automated SMART monitoring and cost planning for ZFS boot mirrors across a six-node Proxmox homelab cluster with mixed SSD/HDD hardware. Track drive health, plan replacements, and manage homelab storage costs effectively.

New USB drives arrived for my Ceph cluster, and they’re not reporting SMART data. Again. After solving this problem in my October 2025 article, I need to update the configuration with new device IDs and share the lessons learned from running this solution across my entire cluster.

The bottom line: This was absolutely the right decision. SMART monitoring has already caught failing drives before they damaged data, and the performance trade-off is negligible compared to the stability benefits.

USB drives are notorious for hiding their SMART data behind finicky USB-to-SATA bridges. If you’ve ever tried to check the health of a Seagate USB drive and gotten frustrated with “unsupported field in scsi command” errors, you’re not alone.

After wrestling with several Seagate drives in my homelab, I finally figured out the magic incantations needed to get SMART data working. Here’s how to do it properly.

Update (2026-02-03): This article has been superseded by USB Drive SMART Updates: Fast-Track to the GRUB Solution which includes updated device IDs and production experience from my Ceph cluster deployment.

Note: The decision to not allow this in Linux as a default was done for good reasons. You are playing with fire as some drives behave erratically. I have not experienced this with recently purchased USB drives, but older ones did have quirks and issues. So buyer beware.