Recently I'v been looking into using hdparm to improve system proformance, as of now i haven't used it for anything but when attempting to get information on my drive i get the error "HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device". This happens on a Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA hard disk controlled by a Promise FastTrack 368 RAID Controller integrated to my ASUS K8V Deluxe. My prevoius linux system was slackware 10.0 and hdparm works fine there. Other Details: Kernel Version: 2.6.10-gentoo-r4 Detailed output from my box: root@predatorbox# uname -a Linux predatorbox 2.6.10-gentoo-r4 #1 Wed Jan 12 13:06:03 EST 2005 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3400+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux root@predatorbox# hdparm -i /dev/sda /dev/sda: HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
*** Bug 78042 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
please test hdparm-5.9 and development-sources-2.6.11-rc4
Well, i don't know anything about serial ata, but as far as i know hdparm is just for ide devices
Please try a kernel equal to or newer then 2.6.11-rc4-bk6, this has SATA changes for ATA passthrough (which is what you need for proper SMART support). At the time of writing; 2.6.11-rc4-bk7 would be the logical choice.
please try a newer kernel
Using the latest libata snapshot fixes these problems.