Discovered a little trick today if you are using Ataptec RAID cards.

 

If you expose RAW drives in the controller config, you can use hdparm and smartctl on them.  But if you use Adaptec Storage Manager to create logical drives so you get advanced features, they the drives don't get a /dev/adX assigned to them and you can't do smartctl or hdparm.  (Well you can do smartctl but it's a pain and you are still SOL with hdparm.)

 

But generic SCSI devices (/dev/sgX) will be assigned, and you can use them to access the drives without a /dev/sdX id.  Run:

 

lsscsi -g

 

to get the SCSI generic ids for the drives, and you are good to go.

 

This may work for some other advanced controllers too.

Try setting the card to RAID mode with RAW devices exposed... do this from the boot/BIOS utility.  Then make sure the drives show as raw.