[CentOS] smartd and palimpsest

[Keith Roberts]

On Fri, 12 Aug 2011, Robert Heller wrote:

*snip*

>>> The disk's *firmware* updated itself.  So long as the *disk* is powered
>>> up and spinning, its *firmware* is 'running' (or runs when the disk is
>>> accessed or something like that).  Modern disks are a long, long way
>>> from the simple MFM drives of the 1970s (which presented little more
>>> than a buffered interface to the drive mechanism and read/write heads
>>> to the host controller -- eg little more than a simple floppy disk
>>> drive) -- modern disks have actual embedded micro-processors on them
>>> doing various stuff, including monitoring and logging things like
>>> sector errors, drive temp., and so on.
>>
>> So does accessing some of the smart data cause any disk i/o
>> at all, or is this all done from directly firmware?
>
> Depends.  Some of the SMART information is stored on special sectors of
> the platter (sectors that are not part of the sectors available for
> normal use).  Some of the information is fixed burned into the
> (E*)ROM(s) (eg serial numbers) on the disk's logic board and some
> information is 'live' (eg current disk temperature).  There IS I/O
> between the host system and the disk's logic board.

Thanks Robert. Reason I ask is because I'm using GKrellM to 
monitor my HDD temperatures. So I just wondered if querying 
the HDD temps to often would create more disk i/o ?

Kind Regards,

Keith Roberts

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