I did too, but shortly after decommissioning that server the drive became unresponsive. I really dodged a bullet without even realizing at the time. SMART data did not work and may have alerted me in that case.

Also, unrelated to SMART data, the server failed to do reboots because the USB-SATA adapter did not properly reset without a full power cycle (which did not happen with that mainboard’s USB on reboots). It always git stuck searching for the drive. Restarting the server therefore meant shutting it down and calling someone to push the button for me - or use Wake-On-LAN which thankfully worked but was still a dodgy workaround.

From what I read online that can lead to instabilities and was therefore disabled on Linux.

And you typically don’t get SMART-Data from USB-adapters.