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[jamieburchell]

I'm considering ditching my desktop PC. It's nice to know I can test the drives in the 323 with manufacturers utilities by connecting directly to my PC's SATA port though. I've got a USB/SATA enclosure, but how effective if at all are the diagnostics over this interface? Is a USB/SATA cable any better, or is this the same wiring and interface as using an enclosure ?

[gunrunnerjohn]

SMART doesn't work over most USB connections, I have at least four different SATA/USB controllers here, none pass SMART diagnostics through.

It's clearly best to connect it directly to a SATA port on the machine.  I have one of these on a machine to make the job easy: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371028

[jamieburchell]

That doesn't help those of us fortunate enough to only own netbooks and laptops... SMART aside, do Seagtools and the like still perform surface scans etc over USB? What about USB hard drives, presumably their SMART data can be checked and disks scanned?

[gunrunnerjohn]

I believe at least some of the manufacturer diagnostics work for USB drives, though I don't know if 3rd party USB interfaces work.