Checking disks behind RAID controllers

RAID controllers typically simulate a (logical) disk for each array of (physical) disks to the OS. Access to SMART functionality relies on ATA or SCSI pass through I/O controls providing direct access to each physical disk. But the standard I/O controls available are usually not designed to make this distinction between logical and physical disks. Therefore, smartmontools has to use vendor specific I/O controls. Support for disks behind RAID controllers is highly dependent on both platform and controller type.

RAID-Controller	Directive	Supported in OS
		Linux	FreeBSD	MS-Windows	NetBSD/ OpenBSD	Solaris	MacOS/ Darwin
3ware SATA RAID controller	-d 3ware,N	Yes 1	Yes 2	Yes 3	?	?	?
Areca SATA RAID controller	-d areca,N	Yes 4	No	No	?	?	?
HighPoint RocketRAID SATA RAID controller	-d hpt,L/M/N	Yes 5	Yes 6	No	?	?	?
CCISS (HP/Compaq Smart Array Controller)	-d cciss,N	Yes 7	Yes	No	?	?	?
LSI MegaRAID SAS RAID controller Dell PERC 5/i,6/i controller	-d megaraid,N	Yes 8	Yes 9	No	?	?	?

See the notes below and the INSTALL file for information about kernel and driver requirements on your platform. Also consult the man pages for controller specific smartmontools options or directives.

Notes:

1. 3ware RAID controllers are supported on Linux since smartmontools release 5.1-18. Support for char devices /dev/tw* was added in release 5.33.
2. 3ware support on FreeBSD is available since release 5.33, multiple controller and char device support was added in release 5.36.
3. 3ware 9000 series only (added in release 5.37), requires Windows driver 9.4.0 or later. For older controllers or 64-bit systems, smartctl and smartd provide limited SMART support through tw_cli tool, see man page.
Initially the SMART support was added only to the 32-bit driver, this is probably still the case. 3ware did never document the new I/O-controls for SMART support in their driver release notes. Smartmontools was tested with 9500S and driver 9.4.1 (3wareDrv.sys 3.00.02.090) on WinXP SP2. This should also work with 9550SX/U, 9590SE, and 9650SE Series. But there was not much feedback since then.
4. Areca support on Linux added in release 5.39. The Areca controller must have firmware version 1.46 or later. Earlier versions will not return SMART information but will instead produce (harmless) SCSI error messages. Areca SAS controllers (1680 series) are not supported, see ticket #21.
5. HighPoint RocketRAID support for Linux was added in release 5.37.
6. HighPoint RocketRAID support for FreeBSD was added in release 5.39.
7. CCISS (Compaq Smart Array Controller) support for Linux was added in release 5.37.
8. Support for LSI MegaRAID controller on Linux was added in release 5.39.
9. Support of LSI MegaRaid on FreeBSD is implemented with mfip.ko module and /dev/passX devices.