Two S-ATA drives, duplicate SMART data with Via controller

[PassMan]

Today i installed second S-ATA drive to my computer. DiskCheckup shows same S.M.A.R.T info for both drives, only 'seek error rate' and 'C3 (unknown attribute)' are different.

[David (PassMark)]

It would not be too unusual for a lot of the attributes to be the same between drives, if the drives are running OK. But the serial numbers should never be the same.

What is the model number and serial numbers for both the drives?
What are the values for attribute 'C', power cycle count?

[PassMan]

It shows even same serial number for both drives. Power cycle count is 265 for both drives. First drive is ST3200827AS and it shows same model for second also, but this new one is actually ST3250624AS. Both are Seagate Barracuda S-ATA drives.

Can this be, because i got s.m.a.r.t. disabled in BIOS? I.e., HDTune can't show s.m.a.r.t. info for S-ATA drives at all when s.m.a.r.t is disabled in BIOS.

[David (PassMark)]

We didn't do much testing of DeskCheckup with the BIOS SMART setting disabled. Our assumption was that nothing would work if the feature was disabled from BIOS. Maybe that assumption was wrong.

Did you trying turning on the BIOS setting?

[PassMan]

I enabled S.M.A.R.T. in BIOS, but no joy. But now HDTune don't show S.M.A.R.T. data at all for my S-ATA drives. Strange..

EDIT: Found this info at VIA forum:

You will only be able to SEE the Smart Status of the SATA connected to the Channel 0 on the VIA Controller if you use a windows based utility such as Everest Ultimate. Even if you use the SeaTools Diagnostic running on a floppy disk during boot you will only SEE (1) of the SATA's Smart Status.

This does not mean that your 2nd SATA connected to Channel 1 is not reporting Smart Status but the data is not being forwarded from the controller most likely because the architecture of the controller is a PCI-ISA Bridge. Visa versa if you switched channels then one channel will report the Smart Status

If you for instance you had 2 SATA's either standalone or in a RAID Array on the Promise-378 Controller both drives Smart Status will be available both in windows as well as by the SeaTools Diagnostic because the architecture of the Promise-376/378 Controllers is straight on the PCI Buss.

[David (PassMark)]

Thanks for posting this information about the limits of the Via controller.