Question about SMART

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 10:50:54 -0700,
  Paolo Galtieri <pgaltieri at gmail.com> wrote:
> Running smartctl produces:
> 
> smartctl --all -d scsi /dev/sde
> smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
> 
> Device: Seagate  FreeAgent Go     Version: 0142
> Serial number:             2GE45ABA
> Device type: disk
> Local Time is: Sat Jul  9 10:45:54 2011 MST
> Device does not support SMART

According to:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/Supported_USB-Devices
FreeAgent Go appears to be supported. And according to the link to the
mailing list for one version of the device it should be working at least
as far back as 5.39. Though the test was using -d sat,12 rather than -d scsi.

Why don't you try that and see if you get better results.