SCT Support Level no longer valid field in ACS3 or 4

[Bear]

Hello,

In version SMARTCTL 6.4 and 6.5 the SCT Support Level output is referencing the sct_spec bytes 4-5 of the SCT status response. In ACS 3 and 4 this is now an Obsolete field.

I would believe this output should be removed.

[Christian Franke]

Various drives return 0, most still return 1. Printing this field is fairly useless but does not do any harm. Possibly field should be printed only if >= 2.

Actually this field was obsolete since the first ATA standard with SCT. It was originally defined in the TR:

T13/1701DT Revision 5, "SMART Command Transport (SCT)", 2005:
SCT Spec. | 0001h - Highest level of SCT Technical Report supported

T13/1699-D Revision 6a, "ATA-8 ACS", 2008:
SCT Spec. | Obsolete

BTW, if we would take all "obsolete" info for serious, there would be no support for SMART thresholds (obsolete since ATA-4, 1998) in any version of smartmontools (since 2002). We also would have to disable important parts of ATA SMART for devices advertising ACS-4 (see T13/f15138, "The SMART Diet").

PS: Please don't attach screen shots if plain/text output is possible.

[Bear]

Thank you for the comments. I am verifying the smartctl -x outputs and trying to map them into the spec for various HDDs. I suppose "no harm no foul" but it is a useless field

My bad on the screenshots.

[Christian Franke]

r4658.

[Christian Franke]

Milestone renamed