David Greaves wrote:

I just bought a usb/sata adapter like this:
  http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/a7ea/?cpg=ab
lsusb -v is below

Works OK as a hot-plug SATA disk so I can check what's on that old disk in the
corner; but smartctl doesn't work so I can't see if it has any errors, run
selftests etc.

Kernel is 2.6.27-rc5 (I've also tried older kernels)

I plugged a previously zeroed drive in and...

root@ash:~ # smartctl -a /dev/sde
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Device: ST332062 0AS              Version:
Device type: disk
Local Time is: Thu Oct  9 21:38:16 2008 BST
Device supports SMART and is Enabled
Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported
SMART Health Status: OK

Error Counter logging not supported
Device does not support Self Test logging

The USB bridge should support SAT (SCSI-ATA translation) and many
don't.  Nothing much can be done about it.  The hardware just don't know
how to do it.

-- 
tejun